Harmony Shepard and the Escape Artists
by Guardian54
Summary: How the hell is Sirius Black going to even get close enough to tell Harry the truth given a gun-toting, professionally-trained soldier-girl is backing Harry up? Harmony published her third year's modified memoirs under the title "Prisoner of Azkaban", but this? This is the true story of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Harmony Shepard's third year.
1. Dominant Species

A/N: This may be TL:DR for many, just read the bold parts.

I've run face-first into a wall on the Quidditch matches. 150 miles per hour is about 70 meters or 230 feet a second, so being 10 feet i.e. 1/23 seconds away from the Snitch, no Bludger should matter in the Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw match this year. Also, the level of wind whipping into your face at such speed, well, you've better have goggles, and a scarf to reduce chances of chafing your neck. Anyhow, Harmony's going to be proven wrong about quite a few things, for example, Hogwarts teachers do NOT use time-turners, and they don't do multiple classes at the same student-subjective times, as she will learn the hard way this year.

**Bad News:** Took the Mary Sue Litmus Test I found on Google, **Harmony Shepard here is or will be in the low end of the "Sue" range** (for fanfic characters, 34 points on that particular test, mostly due to being a twin, having the same friends, being a hard-ass/analytical, and having a spark with a canon character, means the low end of the Sue range). However, get this, assuming Harry's actions mostly working out for the best indicates JKR believes him justified, **Harry Potter himself rates 86 ± 5 points on that test! Over 50 means HOPELESS SUE even for original fiction writers!** I must register my astonishment that JKR managed to start a cultural phenomenon with a hopelessly Mary Sue character, _even if you don't count the "do you think he was always justified" questions on the test_!

As Spacebar said in another review to the above rant: **Harry Potter demonstrates tremendous capability, and the brains of a concussed jock**, successfully having trouble defeating a foaming at the mouth loon. His parents were smart so he shouldn't be that stupid and need to be saved by a Deux Ex Machina i.e. unbeatable super wand. **"that's like the Star Wars Emperor almost losing to a mouse, but the Death Star saves him."**

**PAIRINGS: R/Hr, H/Hr(?), H/G(?) Note: Hr stands for TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE. So, while I rant in A/N's about R/Hr, don't dismiss the H/Hr possibility. You have been warned.**

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Chapter 1: Dominant Species

_Definition: Dominant Species—Most abundant species in a community and the best competitor for resources. Example: non-psychic humans in the community of humans._

* * *

_Number 5, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England, Early August, 1993_

Harmony Shepard had done some interesting things that summer. These things included considering whether or not—and she deemed this probable—Lucius Malfoy had said those things he did due to a desire to play both sides. It was well within possibility that he had known the Diary was a soul anchor or whatever Wizards called it, and had fobbed it off on Ginny expecting her to be caught with it, but didn't expect it to put his son in danger. When confronted, he acted like he wasn't sure and was glad it was destroyed, which meant he'd have something to fall back on when becoming a turncoat. He could also excuse it before Voldemort as something Dumbledore implanted in their young, impressionable minds to try to trick Voldemort into getting rid of one of his top lieutenants. Alternatively he could pass it off as something he had to do to keep up appearances… yes, that was more likely… Regardless of whether or not he knew what the Dairy was, he was trying to keep his options open, and that was exploitable.

In other news, she'd been mostly living alone at the house her mother had acquired after finding out where Harry's relatives lived. From what she'd been able to analyze, the whole of Privet Drive had been put under extensive wards to prevent any Psychic with ill intent toward Harry from entering. This had been a conclusion drawn from her, a psychic and a non-psychic soldier all being able to turn onto the street when not thinking of Harry. However, everyone except the non-psychic had been strongly compelled (when driving, even very slowly) or outright stopped (when walking) from turning onto the street when thinking about attacking someone named Harry Potter. It seemed Dumbledore had been too soft to put up excessively solid wards that would splatter you across the front seats of a car if you drove into them, instead, it was like ramming a very large sponge/spring of some sort.

Recently, she'd received news that the destruction of vampires was going well, SI had driven Nundus to extinction a while ago, and if there was one thing that was true about any sapient species that should reach to the stars, it was that they had to be, generally speaking, the apex predator of their homeworld. This meant the destruction of predators that could pose a real, consistent danger to them, such as how vampires and werewolves were dangerous. However, as werewolves were only dangerous one night a month (most PMS-ing women could be dangerous for longer than that) and there was no evidence it could pass on genetically to offspring, some of them could be permitted to live. As long as they didn't infect others, they could be allowed to exist, and the condition would die out on its own. The more rabid ones on the other hand would be terminated, probably via Instant Autopsy (TM).

So, back to the matter of the Death Eaters, it would make perfect sense if most of the top ranks were intelligent enough to only be more or less on Voldemort's side, fanatics excluded. All aristocrats needed victims to oppress to inflate their own egos and of course soothe their inadequacy as life-forms, so if they really got rid of all "Muggle filth", they'd be left with no one to turn their noses up at, which was no fun. Besides, by now Wizard domination of the world was impossible as the Muggles would have no problem pulling off a literal Scorched Earth Strategy, and Muggle weapons were superior to Wizarding weapons now anyhow. Regardless, analyzing Lucius Malfoy's predicted alignment further would probably result in her mind running in circles since there wasn't quite enough evidence for a verdict yet. That brought her mind, after leaving that topic, to some other issues.

Harry's Muggle relatives were abnormally, psychotically obsessed with appearing absolutely normal to their neighbours. They were the worst kind of stupid sheeple who lived for the eyes of others and merely existed without ever being actually happy. It was probably even less healthy than her existence as a Janitor, and that was saying something. There was, in sickening doses in the Dursleys, the immense arrogance that had mankind believe its own kind superior to all others and had been the excuse for just about every war crime or other heinous wrong ever perpetrated by mankind. Just so that she wouldn't attract too much attention from the extremely nosy Petunia Dursley, Harmony didn't spend more than about fourteen hours per day training, and only eight or so a day at actual training facilities, the rest of it consisting of exercises at home.

This was not to say that her microphones hadn't told her enough about how Petunia liked to complain about the young woman living in Number 5 was living alone at her apparent age which was apparently "improper" and "abnormal". She would sincerely like to show Petunia how normalcy really worked: light grey (not white) picket fence and two OR three kids, not two-point-something. This was because Dudley, Harry's hideously obese and clearly mentally disabled cousin, probably classified as (volumetrically) roughly two point five kids given just how obese he was, but hey… She also wanted to give Petunia's head an Instant Autopsy by shotgun, but she expected to find nothing inside so it wasn't worth the manufacturing cost of the shotgun shell required.

Harmony spent the rest of her time sampling the feeds from Harry's residence—she didn't deign to call it his home after seeing the sort of shit his so-called relatives put him through—and of course practicing hacking and information technology skills. She'd gotten much better than before, then again she didn't have anything else really to do with her spare time when she wasn't off at training, which she did every day like a full-time job. Yes, she had her own PT regimen that she kept to while at her current base of operations, but that was another matter and didn't take up enough of her day.

She had deliberated carefully on what sort of birthday gift she should send to Harry, ranging from a long letter telling him how to stop being a total moron to a letter bomb (to end his misery and Noble Git(TM) tendencies for good) to candy. She finally settled on the latter because he was practically beyond hope of saving and she felt strongly negative about actually killing him even though half the time in his company she wanted to blow his head open. The only thing she could be totally certain of these days was that for the duty of saving the Wizarding World, she'd have to do the job for him, most likely repeatedly. His sheer incompetence was astounding and would likely have side-effects on her own attempts to patch his messes up. It wasn't like she could let him die and be done with it either, because he was apparently some sort of Chosen One character, the most ridiculously cliché sort ever, complete with reduced to an abused orphan by his nemesis who killed his parents.

This meant if he died the Wizarding World would just roll over and die and she couldn't have that until she finished extracting all possible knowledge from it. Yes, it was a decaying world with more discoveries being made through archaeology than actual invention and with extreme class disparities and prejudices, but she was still going to rob it dry of its knowledge and abilities while she could. If that meant she had to baby-sit him in the meantime whenever there wasn't a Deus Ex Machina to save his sorry, bony ass, then so be it. From what she'd learned so far, destroying that world completely would not be too challenging once she'd finished milking it dry.

Something interesting had transpired several days ago before Harry's birthday and before her own. Ron had phoned Harry, and with the ignorance and technophobia typical of wizards it was not unexpected that it would be a disaster. Well, at least Ron was trying to learn, which was better than she could say for most magicals. From the video feed, Harmony had felt inclined to introduce Vernon Dursley to a water cannon with how much he was spitting. Actually, a sonic weapon would be nice too with how much the walrus yelled… a sonic weapon to be applied after she cut out his vocal cords, it could help him lose weight if it managed to break down enough of his body fat. In addition to that, she had found it interesting when Ron sent her mail regarding the yelling incident, and announced happily that his dad had won the wizarding lottery.

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A/N: Did you know that in the versions of the HP books with actual writing in them, Hermione spells her own name wrong when signing her letter for Harry's 13th birthday? It's in cursive and reads "Hermonie"

* * *

Hermione had sent her older twin mail as well, being on vacation in France with their parents. In reality, it was Jane running around negotiating with various Allied factions while Dan Granger kept his younger daughter occupied in museums and libraries. Harmony didn't expect her mother to be back to see her off at King's Cross this year, but she expected her father to be there, therefore he could sign off on her Hogsmeade form at the platform. They could probably excuse owl post as something no one expects before the people do doubt watching her father, but Harmony hadn't gathered enough from the Wizarding World to destroy it yet if any shit got out about it.

The next event, the one that made Harmony blow up at the Dursleys for good involved a hideously obese _thing_ with a moustache and beard but which wore vaguely female clothes arriving at Harry's place. By the end of day three she was inclined to break down the front door with a breaching charge and purge the Dursley family for the good of all humanity. By the end of day five she was treating it as a societal lesson with regards to the mindsets of the oppressors, a show of insecurity and the need to oppress others to make one feel better about themselves. This Marge character was certainly interesting… and Harmony decided she would take great pleasure mopping the bitch up.

On the evening of day seven, Harmony watched impassively as Harry Potter inflated his aunt somehow without killing her, which seemed scientifically absurd… _Wait, if it filled her internal cavities with extra, replicated interstitial fluid somehow… yes, that would work, yes, that would work to a degree… and she could be deflated by Ministry people without necessarily killing her._

She had gone outside to intercept him when she saw a large black dog near one of the neighbours' sheds watching the boy as she dragged his huge, heavy trunk down the street. She stopped in the shadows and watched as Harry looked around frantically as if just realizing his impulsiveness had gotten him into trouble again. She was crossing the street and about to greet him when he noticed the dog and tripped over his trunk in shock… and she had to dive-roll out of the way as a garish purple triple-decker bus appeared out of a roughly bus-shaped portal that had appeared out of nowhere. There was something about that energy field that surrounded the thing that drew her curiosity, and Harmony decided to take a ride to investigate how it worked. She'd read of the Knight Bus before, so this should be easy… she ghosted off to the other end of the drive while Harry was trying to figure out what the bus was about, and soon stuck her wand arm out with intent to summon the bus.

* * *

_Five minutes later…_

_For a people who've figured out how to navigate in, of all things, subspace, running between the background threads of reality, magicals sure aren't quantitative in their analyses._ She thought a bit after she got onto the bus after Harry in disguise, by changing her voice up, changing her hairstyle, and tensing different facial muscles so that the panicked, confused kid wouldn't recognize her. As per expected, he never noticed her, even though she'd sat on the farthest point on this deck of the bus from him (which would have been obvious to a trained person looking for amateurs, as obvious as a relatively close by spot would be) and was going to the same destination. Actually, no, this wasn't subspace, not by the Star Trek description, it was like the bus was making its way through between the weave of strands that made up reality…

For an inexperienced one like her to tap into the magic of the vehicle that much was no easy task. Her head felt like it was about to explode and some of the blood vessels on her eyes had ruptured when she'd deflected the feedback damage away from her brain and worked hard to not ruin her retinas. Crimson blood mixed with tears spread across the surface of her eyes and tinted her vision slightly pink before she finally disengaged, getting as much information as she could and slumping against the wall next to the cot in exhaustion, blood trailing from her nose, coughing wetly a couple times from where the feedback had torn at the surface tissue of her airways.

Every time they decanted from or entered into the streams of non-reality, the bus's frame would take stress that they felt as a sudden acceleration or deceleration despite inertial control. The energy difference of the transition was partly dissipated as a horribly loud BANG inside the vehicle. No doubt the shielding systems of the bus were dissipating most of the back-wash of every transit, but Harmony wasn't focused on that so much as the fact that she'd just figured out that psychics were capable of faster than light travel but had no idea how to use it properly. Some of the blood on her eyes was congealing around the ruptured capillaries' ends, sealing them up with the help of capillary epithelial cells binding together, while the rest was washed away by tears that ran pink down her face and were drained into her nose as the bleeding there slowed to a stop too. Her throat still hurt, but it wasn't bleeding anymore, which was good… She hoped there was no lasting damage, but if there was, then she knew that discovering FTL possibilities for all humanity was more than worth going blind, losing her voice, sense of smell, or any combination thereof.

She disembarked at Diagon Alley and blended in with the background, watching the slimy paws of Fudge sink his claws into the naïve Harry Potter. She mentally shook her head sadly at the fact that she hadn't been apprehended for interrogation by the Aurors guarding Fudge yet. She would have shaken her mental head at Harry's idiocy if she hadn't more or less given up on the Noble Git.

She ordered some food from Tom, the bartender/owner of the Leaky Cauldron, acting a bit more mature than her age to make it seem reasonable that she was out here at this time of the evening alone. Her relatively large body size (just shy of 5'8" at just about 172 cm) helped that pretence, but she suspected it was more her passive emissions i.e. aura of maturity that convinced Tom she was not underage. It didn't take long to ensure Harry was settled in at the tavern, and Harmony proceeded with her business in Diagon Alley, namely buying a bunch more broomsticks for the weapons labs to go over. They said they were just about done with the new anti-gravity platforms, but still wanted more data points and readings to work with for final calibrations. Most people in Quality Quidditch Supplies were too busy ogling the Firebolt and didn't notice the generic curly-haired brunette leaving with ten more brooms than she came in with. Harmony was not interested in the newfangled broom, high-end inertial control and antigravity systems were accounted for by her Nimbus 2001 well enough for now given the technology was still in its infancy.

The Corrosive Weapons technology from the Basilisk was going rather well, analysis said the venom glands used several components and used psionic containment to channel them all into the target at once before they would have reacted inside the fang (which would have been bad). Most of the lethality of the venom against soft targets was through a massive surge of hemotoxins and neurotoxins, but the glands also contained sections devoted to countering hard targets. The venom, post-mixing, contained a mix of enzymes and reagents that could attack metallic armour and even eat away at some ceramics and plastics. It also reacted badly to magical protections, dissipating psychic energy as heat which made exposed objects generally spontaneously combust.

Two days later, Marge Dursley was kidnapped from her residence by SI Black Ops soldiers dressed to conceal their identities and factional alignments, only painting on the walls of her home that "This bitch shall never return". All of her dogs were put down by explosives (for the kennel) and assault (read: semi-auto) shotgun fire, and the corpses were strewn outside the home and kennel. The neighbourhood celebrated the riddance of the cow while several dozen kilometres away Harmony was complaining loudly about the amount of fat she had to cut through after she sandpapered Marge's skin off in some areas.

Chaining the _thing_ to the wall hadn't worked because she sagged too much to be convenient. Instead, they'd chained her to a surgical table, her lardy body spilling over the sides of the table as she raged and flopped around like a giant maggot before Harmony arrived. As soon as she saw the thing she told her men to bring a deep fat fryer… she cut a block of lard off Marge, cauterized the wound with a blow-torch (not that it really needed cauterizing given how few blood vessels were in the fat) and put it in the fryer to extract the oil from it. A ladle would be an excellent implement to fry this critter… and so Harmony used one to sling hot oil at the beast. After all, in a soundproofed room in one of the houses SI Black Ops members owned, no one could hear you scream…

It took half an hour for her to finish taking pleasure in completing janitorial work. She felt vaguely sick at herself as she burnt the remains in an open fire, then treated them with acid to break down the bones and finally lye to erase DNA evidence. However, she reminded herself that sometimes, you had to fight fire with fire, fight evil with evil, you had to stare into the abyss and let it stare back…

To anyone else, she would probably be classified as completely insane and highly dangerous. But a girl couldn't have killed for her first time at age nine, been in military training since age eight, and have to deal with so much world-saving bullshit in her life, at school or otherwise, and still remain completely sane. It would be amazing how much self-restraint she had when Harry Potter grew old enough to understand how much she'd been shielding him from and tried to lecture her on her methods.

* * *

As a side note, Ancestor Kane had sent Harmony some songs that he said would eventually be published by a band named Disturbed. She had no idea what this meant, and could come up with two hypotheses: One, Kane was going to be the band himself or Two, the files had been sent back in time because Kane had liked them in the future and wanted her to have them now. It would turn out that the less likely explanation when reasoning from what she knew of Kane (i.e. the latter) was true.

The songs were quite nice and a nice few made the "SI Soundtrack" after she showed them to her mother. For example, the metal version of _Land of Confusion_ would replace the original Genesis version on the soundtrack as soon as Disturbed actually released the album including that song. Also awaiting release to go on the SI Soundtrack from "Disturbed" were _Ten Thousand Fists_, _Another Way To Die_, _Never Again_, _Innocence_, _Mine_, _Sacred Lie_ and _Believe_.

Harmony chose a few more (in addition to the ones that made the SI Soundtrack) songs for her own personal play-list, these were: _I'm Alive_, _Deify_ (the irony of the file being given to her by an Immortal was too much not to…), _Liberate_, _Down with the Sickness_ and _Indestructible_. The ironic thing was that given the events that would come in this school year, Harmony really should have put _Parasite_, _Run_ and _The Animal_ onto her play-list. Perhaps if she had kept that in mind she'd still have her right hand when the year was over, and perhaps the year's events could have played out in near-musical fashion if she felt like remembering the damned tunes and words.

In other news, apparently the Allies had felt they'd recovered well enough from the Psychic Dominator Disaster to hammer the now nuclear-free Soviet Union into oblivion once and for all, and had started World War 5 in July. That was shortly before she moved into Privet Drive.

* * *

CHARACTER PROFILE: Harmony Jane Shepard (as of 09/01/1993, includes skill points breakdowns, ratings approximate)

Titles: None  
Age: 13 Years  
Height: approx. 173 cm (hit her growth spurt of about 15 cm/year a bit earlier in 1993)  
Mass: about 80 kg or 176 lbs. (appears quite average in figure, though, as it's mostly muscle)  
Specialty: Janitor (Self-proclaimed)  
Small Arms Skill: 9/20 (Pistols: 3/4, Light Automatic Weapons 4/6, Sniping 1/6, Shotguns 1/4)  
Heavy Weapons Skill: 5/20 (Machine Guns: 1/3, Grenades/Grenade Launchers: 3/5, Mortars: 1/4, Rocket Launchers/Recoilless Rifles 0/4, Missiles: 0/4)  
Demolitions Skill: 6/20 (Vehicular Destruction: 1/4, Breaching Charges: 1/4, Traps: 2/6, Structural Demolition: 2/6)  
Vehicular Capability: 4/20 (Automobiles: 2/4, Armoured Fighting Vehicles: 1/4, Aircraft: 0/8, Watercraft: 1/4)  
Information Technology (Hacking): 9/20 (Malware Offence: 2/5, Malware Defence: 2/5 Data Taps: 3/5, Other IT: 2/5)  
Close Quarters Combat: 6/20 (Knife-Fighting: 2/4, Empty-handed: 2/4, Improvised Weaponry: 1/5, Unusual Environments Combat: 1/7)  
Stealth and Infiltration: 11/20 (Stealth: 3/5, Infiltration: 3/5, Intelligence Reporting: 3/5, Quiet Killing: 2/5)  
Psychic Warfare (not including "magic"): 8/20 (Offence: 2/7, Defence: 4/7, Support: 2/6)  
Sadism: 5/20 (Torture Skill: 1/5, Torture Satisfaction: 2/5, Killing Satisfaction: 1/4, Lack of Empathy/Emotion: 1/6)  
Command Skill: 7/20 (Self-Control Skill: 1/3, Tactical Command Skill: 3/7, Strategic Command Skill: 3/10)

Total Rating: 70/200

Increases since last year: Small Arms: Light Automatic +1, Sniping +1, Shotguns +1. Demolitions: Breaching +1, Traps +1 and Structural +1. Vehicles: Armoured Vehicles +1. Information Technology: All +2. CQC: Empty-handed +1. Stealth: Infiltration +1, Intel Reporting +1, Quiet Killing +2. Psychic Warfare: All +1. Sadism Torture & Killing Satisfaction +1 each. I understand she's making big gains, but the first couple years of training were the basic skills (e.g. wilderness survival, physical training, etc.) that didn't even register on the scales.

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A/N: I honestly played with the idea of having Kane actually BE David Draiman, but then changed my mind. So, now, Review replies (from last chaps of Classified Room)!

Dear **Nenfaer**: If the venom glands aren't far back in the jaw, but relatively close to the forward fangs (the ones used to inject poison) then an explosion a few feet or about a meter behind the base of the skull should blast it forward, if it stays intact. However, the condition the Basilisk was in after the blast will be clarified here anyways.

Dear **Everyone**: At least this series has **less copy-paste and more general excitement than the "read the books" fics, right?** When Harmony published her memoirs, she just shifted the speakers somewhat and removed herself, after all… **Updates may be glacial as I began playing SC2 online.**

REVIEW!


	2. Family (and Future Family) Interactions

A/N: You do realize I basically used Slipspace for the Knight Bus, right? The alternative was basically Quantum Jumping (which is actually more consistent with the BANG-ing, but less so with the lack of environmental disturbance).

**I felt vaguely sick when I realized 54 is the number of questions on Lockhart's quiz about himself when I read some "reading the books" fics recently.** Speaking of which, what Harmony would answer to what Harry asked Hagrid in Gringotts in 1991: Stalagmites are the ones you get impaled on if you fall off this cart, Stalactites are the ones that fall on you to impale you.

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Chapter 2: Family (and Future Family) Interactions

_Shepard Residence (Britain), late August, 1993_

Jane Shepard had taken time off from trying to convince the Allies to stop this foolish attack on the Soviets, or more accurately she had more or less given up. Instead she'd sent the Soviets a message about the limits to which they could advance into Allied territory in retaliation for the surprise attack before SI would potentially intervene. In other words it was a "negotiate peace here or else" statement, but hey…

She had taken time off to teach her older daughter how to resist some of the more dangerous psychic techniques since Harmony had read in the _Daily Prophet_ about the possibility of Dementors being stationed around Hogwarts. She had figured it was ostensibly to protect her friend Harry from the escaped convict Sirius Black, the called her Mom about it. Supposedly the foul creatures could drain happiness from a person and their energy as well. Jane couldn't have her daughter getting weakened too quickly by those accursed things if that was the case.

This was why Harmony's hands were holding Jane's shoulders in a vice-grip, crushing some of Jane's long, straight violet-tinted dark red (roughly the colour of drawn venous blood in a vial, probably a shade bluer than typical red wine) hair while the older woman held her daughter's defiant, trembling stare. She was trying to imitate the effects of Dementors by using the closest thing she knew, an ability most psychics called Depressant Leeching, distracting the enemy by drawing out their most painful memories and emotions so that it would be easier to drain their psionic energy to fill up one's own reserves. One of Harmony's irises dilated slightly and her fingers dug marginally deeper into her mother's hard, tense muscles as Jane laid on the heat, hating herself as she put her baby girl through this but at the same time in awe of the resilience of her daughter given how little they'd practiced so far. Finally, after five minutes of shaky but deep breathing from the girl and several shakes of her head to clear her tunnelling vision a bit, the woman stopped and the girl pushed herself back.

"That… was…" The girl shuddered one last time as if shaking it off "_wonderful_." Harmony's face split into a maniacal grin as she fended off her mother's attempt to grab and hug her "I recovered so much information my subconscious had censored out of my memory, let's do it again!"

Jane stared at her for a while, sniffled a couple times, letting her tears fall, then finally buried her face in her hands and sobbed. _I… I broke her. I broke my baby girl and I didn't even realize it! All those weeks making her survive alone in the wilderness instead of spending time with me… I never got to notice just how damaged she is now, how _deranged_. I thought being a bit jaded would help her stay alive, but… from what I've seen the last few days, she's not quite alive anymore. I don't deserve to be a mother…_ She had gone too far when she let Harmony learn all those things that she had wanted to learn.

Harmony sighed, maybe she should have worded that better, although she had a good feeling why her mother was acting this way. "Mom, don't…" She changed from a snappish tone to a softer one "don't regret it. It's all in the past now, and it's thanks to my training that I've managed to stay alive this long in that madhouse called Hogwarts, and I've kept Hermione alive too…" She reached her arms out toward her mother who was sitting a couple feet away on the hardwood floor.

Jane wrapped her arms around her daughter and held her, taking a few moments to calm herself down, sniffling one last time before saying "You know, one of my biggest arguments for abortions is that an aborted fetus is better than an abused child…"

Harmony growled before pushing away to narrow her blazing brown eyes at her mother's light cobalt orbs "What are you talking about, Mom? This is like a mother bear teaching her cub how to fend for itself, hardly abuse by any description of the term." She paused for effect before slowly saying with a wink "I sincerely hope you aren't insinuating that you wished we were never born."

There was a long silence that ensued, Jane quirking one eyebrow and Harmony smirking in response "I might have acted about as easy to play as a fiddle toward you two when you were kiddies, but I don't need to act simple toward you anymore." The redhead told her daughter, who'd scooted up to sit next to her mother, with their backs to the couch in the living room.

Mother and daughter shared a chuckle at that, before Harmony grew serious. "Well, if I don't want to end up a soulless husk by the end of this school year, which is possible given how Harry feels like the protagonist in a poorly-thought-out series of children's fantasy books, then we must keep working on that resistance." Harmony said, to which her mother sighed resignedly. "Besides, it's not like you won't have energy to reward Dad properly for babysitting Hermione for the whole vacation you spent over there, hell, with what you're draining from me versus your investment, I'd say you're breaking even."

"Your father would be disappointed if he heard you talking about our sex life so casually."

"That's his problem, not mine, and besides if he doesn't like getting laid then he can turn you down whenever he's not in the mood" Both women—well, Harmony was more or less grown enough to be called a woman now—giggled at the improbability of such an event unless the poor man, their favourite man, had been nearly worked to death. That was something Hermione was unlikely to have inflicted upon her father in France unless he had to personally carry around all the books the younger girl might buy. "Now how about…" Jane's offensive took her completely by surprise and Harmony's irises constricted as she began to feel the negative memories ramming their way through her defences to the surface "ugh…" she trembled a bit before glaring back defiantly, panting harshly "ha… ha…"

Jane frowned in effort as she picked her daughter up and took her outside before setting her down on her feet "Fight me."

"Just resisting the effects won't beat Dementors down, I need to prove myself still combat-effective even when under attack, is that right, Mother?" Harmony had a tiny, almost pained but still savage smirk on her face as she asked this, stiffening a bit as she felt a wave of nausea come up and her vision swimming a bit as memory clashed with reality.

"Unfortunately, yes, even though I don't want to fight you—" Jane Shepard's arm snapped up to redirect a fast cross chop from her daughter before the two began going at it. They both knew that her mother was the only person Harmony really trusted enough to be taught the mind arts by, and that Jane was hesitant to allow anyone else to do it, and that was why they were here now.

After the day's training sessions were over, they talked about why Harmony had killed Marge Dursley the way she did. Jane expressed only the strongest approval when Harmony explained it as "People who exist solely to take sick pleasure in hurting other people who have never done anything to them have forfeited their right to existence and must be put down like the rabid dogs they are, preferably in a way as twisted and painful as what they liked to put others through. She didn't drown in lard, she drowned in her sea of loathing." At least, that was what she told herself, referencing a band that had yet to form.

* * *

_Diagon Alley, August 31, 1993_

"I can't believe you, Mom, Dad." Harmony hissed at her parents, who both looked suitably ashamed "Have you been focusing so much on helping me learn Dementor resistance and to keep Hermione off my trail that you've neglected bringing Hermione back here to buy her damned books until today?"

"HARRY!"

Harmony heard her sister's yell from where they were standing, quite far away from Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. "I have to go, see you later, Mom, Dad!" She rushed off toward where her sister had spotted their friend, feeling for some odd reason rather more excited than she thought she should. Dan Granger chuckled at his daughter running off, but Harmony didn't bother really noticing it, nor did she notice her mother's derisive snort.

Harry would have probably liked to sit down on the bench at the four-person table normally. However, that wasn't his destiny, at least not this time, for he was tackled into position as he tried to sit. An arm swept his legs out from under him at the knees and another slammed into his shoulders, giving him a noogie as soon as they ground to a halt on the seat. Both of them remained seated when they came to a stop, one in front of a orange-haired, freckly boy who had his mouth halfway open to say something and the other across from a much browner version of herself. Harmony in the meantime was very glad she'd worn her body armour as usual, since she had taken an elbow in the side of her breastplate as she slammed into the unsuspecting boy, and she knew full well how much that could have hurt. She wouldn't have bother with the slammed seating if she hadn't been wearing protection, that was for sure.

"Ouch…" The boy sighed and rolled his eyes "Still as violent as ever, I see."

She let go, pulled back, and tilted her head to blink at him a couple times for effect "You sound like Snape."

"That was the point." Harry chuckled a bit with Ron, Hermione rolled her eyes and smiled while Harmony shook her head and smirked.

Ron resumed from where he was before (i.e. before the beginning of his words) "Well, we're glad you're finally here, mate." Here Harmony, who hadn't heard British slang like that for the last couple months, had a sudden vision of Harry and Ron, a few years older, trying to, uh, mate. The pointless thought was purged from her mind a mere moment afterward as she focused on the conversation at hand "We went to the Leaky, but they said you were gone, then we went to Flourish and Blotts, Madam Malkin's, and so on…"

"I got all my school stuff last week." Harry said, reinforcing Harmony's belief that he had gotten used to aiming for mediocrity with the abuse happening at the Dursleys' all the time given he hadn't done anything really productive for nearly a week. "And how come you know I'm staying at the Leaky Cauldron?"

Harmony mentally rolled her eyes, thinking _Where else would you stay after running away from that hellhole, Harry? Knockturn Alley? Do you really think such a politically important character as yourself would be allowed to stray from the Ministry's eye, Harry?_

However, Ron presented a much simpler explanation of "Dad." _Right, his father works in the Ministry of Magic, that reply would probably escape Harry's bullshit detectors well enough… Then again I don't think Ron is bullshitting._

Hermione leaned in and the other three did the same before she asked in a hushed whisper "Did you _really_ blow up your aunt, Harry?"

Ron sniggered rather loudly at what Hermione seemed to think was so important "I didn't mean to, I just… lost control." Ron's noises escalated into laughing at that.

"It's not funny, Ron." Hermione snapped at the orange-head, who quickly began to tone down his noise level. Harmony sighed, her little sister had the boy wrapped around her little finger and didn't realize it. Hopefully Hermione would realize just how much of Ron's heart was being worn on his sleeve and how much he was wrapped around her finger before she closed her hand and squished him—and his heart by association—by accident. Even though she thought Ron was inadequate for her sister, at least he was making an effort to become more adequate, unlike some people she could name who had the brain of a concussed jock. In the meantime her sister was continuing with "Honestly, I'm amazed Harry wasn't expelled."

"So am I…" Harry sighed "Forget expelled, I thought I was going to be arrested. Your dad doesn't know why Fudge let me off, does he?"

Harmony was about to enlighten Harry and maybe dig his IQ out of the "not applicable" range, but Ron's prompt reply meant she could leave the boy with a better chance to impress her sister a bit with his intelligence "Probably 'cause it's you, isn't it? Famous Harry Potter and all that. I'd hate to see what the Ministry would do to _me _if I blew up an aunt. Mind you, they'd have to dig me up first, because Mum would've killed me. Anyway, you can ask Dad yourself this evening. We're staying at the Leaky Cauldron tonight too! So you can come to King's Cross with us tomorrow! Hermione and Harmony will be staying there as well!"

"Mum and Dad dropped me off this morning with all my Hogwarts things, we were invited by the Weasleys." Harmony blinked at her sister's words, suddenly realizing her parents' "guilty" looks had in fact been to hide this fact, given she'd just been brought here mere hours ago to rendezvous with her sister. She looked around to find that her parents were long gone, thinking internally that _The Chinese proverb that goes with this is that ginger is spicier as it ages…hey, that means Mom is probably the hottest redhead (although she's more of a wine colour than ginger) in existence, well sounds plausible to me, depending on the beholder_. "They dropped you off just now, right? How was Canada?" They'd told Hermione that Harmony had decided to go to Canada to spend time with Aunt Hannah and the twins' grandparents.

"Nah, I rode the subway." Harmony waved her sister off one-handed, wondering how long Harry would take to realize that one of her arms was still around his shoulders. If he thought of her as violent and dangerous he should really be more alert… he needed a lot more practice, it seemed, before he'd start practicing proper situational awareness. It was unlikely that anyone else would be around to teach him, so that unfortunate job fell to her as his friend and substitute-hero given he wasn't up to the job nearly often enough.

Harry nodded knowingly "Ah… just like the first time I came here, with Hagrid. So, have you all got your new books and stuff?" He seemed to be mostly looking at Ron.

"Yep, new wand too." Ron said cheerily, pulling a long, thin box out of one of the bags he had with him and opening it "Fourteen inches, willow, containing one unicorn tail-hair. And we've got all our books…" Ron gestured at one of the bags near him "what'd you think about those _Monster Books_, hmm? The assistant nearly cried when we said we wanted two." But Harry had seen something else.

"What's all that, Hermione?" Harry asked with obvious trepidation, pointing at the three bags next to her, filled with books and other school supplies.

"Well, I'm taking more new subjects than you, aren't I?" Hermione seemed to preen a bit while Harmony rolled her eyes, her younger sister needed to learn when to dump some things, i.e. drop them off at the Leaky given their reservation had already kicked in. "Those are my books for Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, the Study of Ancient Runes, Muggle Studies—"

Ron cut her off, finally snapping out of his look of admiration into one of disbelief "What are you doing Muggle Studies for? You're Muggle-born! Your mum and dad are Muggles! You already know all about Muggles!"

"But it'll be fascinating to study them from the wizarding point of view." Hermione smiled dreamily, her eyes glazed a little in the sort of way their mother's tended to do when she was thinking about sex with the twins' father. Harmony rolled her eyes and wondered if her sister had started masturbating before she did, given the older twin hadn't started yet. If Hermione did, the question would be whether or not she relied on books with ribbed spines to get the job done given her near-obsession with knowledge. Oh, and her expression would probably be vaguely similar to what she was wearing right now too, obviously.

"Are you planning to eat or sleep at all this year, Hermione?" Harry asked teasingly while Ron looked somewhere between laughter and concern. Hermione ignored both of them.

"I've still got ten Galleons. I was in France for the holidays, but Mum and Dad gave me so many presents and paid for the stuff I wanted, so I still have some of the spending money they gave me left…"

"How about a nice _book_?" Ron asked with a teasing near-smirk.

"No, I don't think so. I really want an owl. I mean, Harry's got Hedwig, Harmony's got Flare" said practically-never-used owl poked her head out of her nest, in the small cage Harmony was now holding (Hermione had held onto her over the summer), and hooted questioningly at mention of her name "and you've got Errol—"

Ron cut her off again, and Harmony was beginning to re-note his tendency of not letting Hermione finish. "I haven't, Errol's a family owl. All I've got is Scabbers. And I want to get him checked over, I don't think Egypt agreed with him." He pulled the rat's cage out of the pile beside him and put it on the desk. Scabbers seemed thinner than his usual plump state, and his whiskers were a bit droopier than before.

"How long have you had this thing? Rats only live about three years… and you got it from Percy… unless it has magic sustaining it Scabbers should be dead by the end of this year." Harmony stated authoritatively. She was ignored.

Harry gestured with his head "There's a magical creature shop just over there. You could see if they've got anything for Scabbers, and Hermione can get her owl."

"I think Hermione would be more likely to find an owl at the Owl Emporium." Harmony said dryly as they entered the Magical Menagerie. Every inch of the wall was hidden by cages and Harmony was vaguely reminded of jungle operations training in Cameroon by the stench and noise. The witch working the counter was advising a wizard on the care of double-ended newts, so the four teenagers stood around and waited, examining the cases carefully. Harmony noted that the toads they had here could feed on dead, immobile flies as opposed to the usual moving-targets-only capacity of frog and toad eyes. A large tortoise near the window was sleeping with reflective crystals incorporated into its carapace for whatever evolutionary reason, perhaps a dazzle pattern to ward off predators or blend into a gem-rich background, possibly in a series of shallow caves with bioluminescence? A fat white rabbit kept turning into a silk top hat and back with a loud popping noise, orange snails were gliding slowly around the inside of their tank, assorted cats, ravens, rats and a basket of yellowish fur-balls were scattered throughout the shop.

Once the wizard with the double-ended newt left, Ron approached the counter "It's my rat. He been a bit off-color ever since I brought him back from Egypt."

"Bang him on the counter." The witch instructed (complete with slang which Harmony would later wish Ron had followed to the letter), pulling a pair of black glasses out of pocket and donning them as Scabbers was put next to a cage full of sleek black rats. Said black rats stopped playing their skipping game with their tails and scrambled over to the side of their cage to look at the proceedings curiously. Clearly their intelligence had been enhanced by being near too many psionic-energy-imbued items…

The witch frowned "Hmm… how old is this rat?"

Ron shrugged "Don't know, quite old… he used to belong to my brother."

"What powers does he have?" The witch asked.

"Uh…" Ron looked surprised, not unexpected since Scabbers had always seemed completely ordinary other than his odd lifespan. _Hell, my mom and aunt stand out more obviously among normal humans than Scabbers does among rats._ Harmony thought.

The witch's eyes roved over Scabbers once more and she tutted "He's been through the mill, this one." Harmony thought the very large ginger cat—who roughly matched Ron in hair colour—standing on the highest cage and glaring at Scabbers was of the opinion that Scabbers was some sort of dangerous undercover agent. At least, that's what an untrained individual would be thinking of the rat if they had the sort of expression she thought she was seeing on the cat.

"He was like that when Percy gave him to me…" Ron defended his rat.

"An ordinary common or garden rat like this can't be expected to live longer than three years or so. Now, if you were looking for something a bit more hard-wearing, you might like one of these…" The witch indicated the black rats, which promptly started skipping again. Ron muttered something about show-offs and shook his head. "Well, if you don't want a replacement, you can try this rat tonic." She reached under the counter and brought out a small red bottle.

"Okay… how much—OW!" Harmony thought it was lucky wizards were naturally more resistant to sudden trauma than muggles or the giant ginger cat would have probably broken his neck with how it launched itself off Ron's head toward Scabbers, spitting madly. Ron had buckled until his hands were braced against the table

"NO, CROOKSHANKS, NO!" The witch shouted, but Scabbers had made his run for it and Harmony didn't bother pouncing on the creature as Ron shouted its name and raced out of the shop after him. Harmony didn't follow the boys, she elected to baby-sit her sister while she examined the large ginger cat and stroked its head a couple times. Then Hermione decided to buy him. Harmony had a feeling Ron wouldn't be too happy about this, which was ridiculous as it indicated that Hermione liked orange-haired things, a set of objects that included Ron.

When they came out of the store, Harry and Ron were coming back, having recaptured Scabbers. Hermione was cradling the huge cat, which was purring contentedly, when Ron remarked, his mouth hanging open "You _bought _that monster?"

"He's _gorgeous, _isn't he?" Hermione pretended to be oblivious.

"Hermione, that thing nearly scalped me!" Ron said.

"He didn't mean to, did you, Crookshanks?" Hermione scratched behind the cat's ears and it meowed.

"And what about Scabbers?" Ron was pointing at the lump in his chest pocket "He needs rest and relaxation! How's he going to get it with that thing around?"

Hermione frowned "Crookshanks will be sleeping in my dormitory and Scabbers in yours, what's the problem? Poor Crookshanks, that witch said he'd been in there for ages; no one wanted him."

"I wonder why?" Ron said sarcastically, looking at the cat that was large enough to have its back significantly higher than his knees when on all fours. It seemed to him that Harry's assessment that it was "a very large cat or quite a small tiger" was a bit of an understatement.

"Give Scabbers his rat tonic, which by the way you forgot" Harmony said frigidly, not liking the tone the kid was taking with her baby sister as she stuffed the red bottle she snatched from Hermione's hand into Ron's hands brusquely "or let him rest in peace and get it over with." Hermione cared enough about Ron to help him with his pet, and Harmony doing the returning would get that point across better than Hermione doing it.

They set off toward the Leaky Cauldron after that comment and the awkward silence that ensued. There, they found Mr. Weasley sitting at the bar, reading the heavily-censored governmental rag called the _Daily Prophet_, just the title of which made Harmony feel sick due to the religious connotation. She was nearly mentally allergic to churches, every time she saw the cross on top she could only think of their attempts to purge, by burning, all non-conformists, particularly free-thinking women. Sure enough, like a religion, the wizarding paper was a tool of the rulers (the Ministry owned it) to keep the masses stupid and obedient… while she was mentally going over the evils of religions and of the Machine, the conversation had started "Harry, Harmony! How are you?" Mr. Weasley had looked up from his slowly lowering newspaper upon seeing them.

"Fine, thanks." Harry replied politely.

"Great, thank you, Mr. Weasley." Harmony said elaborately, causing her sister and potential future brother-in-law to stare for a moment.

Harry in the meantime had noticed the black-and-white (_How primitive… and with no drive whatsoever to modernize…_ Harmony thought contemptuously) photo of Sirius Black "They still haven't caught him, then?"

Arthur Weasley's set his jaw in an uncharacteristically grim expression "No, they've pulled us all off our regular jobs at the Ministry to try and find him, but no luck so far."

Harmony's thought processes seemed to rewind and replay that statement before giving up the ghost and concluding that _Mein Gott… The Ministry is even more incompetent than I thought… WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING TO COVER THEMSELVES FROM NON-MAGICALS THEN?_

At the same time Ron was asking "Would we get a reward if we caught him? It'd be good to get some more money—" Harmony wondered suddenly as to what Ron would be like if he ever found out about the money her parents had. Would he still be after Hermione herself or after her money? Hmm… that would effectively be a control switch on whether or not any relationship between the ginger and her twin would ever get off the ground… no, scratch that, whether or Ron's brain would be painting the airport tarmac would be the issue in that case.

Mr. Weasley snorted tiredly "Don't be ridiculous, Ron. Black's not going to be caught by a thirteen-year-old wizard. It's the Azkaban guards who'll get him back, you mark my words." Harmony personally suspected the Dementors would inflict more damage as collateral than Black would have inflicted on purpose. At that moment, Mrs. Weasley entered the bar/tavern/hotel, laden with shopping bags with the Weasley twins, Percy and Ginny in tow.

Ginny had always had a bit of a crush on Harry, but thanks to Harmony's tutelage after the Chamber of Secrets had apparently gained enough confidence to only glance away once while she was greeting Harry with a very obvious blush. Harmony sighed as a surge of annoyance ran through her, it seemed Ginny had a longer way to go than she'd hoped before she could interact with Harry freely…

Percy on the other hand spent the next minute making a fool of himself, aided in this noble undertaking by Fred and George Weasley. Molly Weasley did not exactly help him much as she told Harry proudly the obvious news of Percy getting Head Boy. "Second Head Boy in the family!"

"And last…" Fred muttered in the background, but it was enough for his sharp-eared mother to catch.

Molly rolled her eyes and sighed "I don't doubt that, I notice they haven't made you two prefects."

"What do we want to be prefects for? It'd take all the fun out of life." George looked like he was about to be sick.

Ginny's giggle prompted Molly to tell them off. "You want to set a better example for your sister!"

"Ginny's got other brothers to set her an example, Mother." Percy said snottily "I'm going up to change for dinner…"

"By the way, Mum, please remember that there can only be one male Prefect per house per year, so we couldn't be made Prefects." Fred pointed out to Molly, who facepalmed and told him it had slipped her mind. At the same time, George was telling Harry that the twins had tried to shut Percy in a pyramid but had been spotted by Molly. Harmony suddenly felt that Fred had just been distracting Molly so that she wouldn't hear George and get angry over the incident again.

* * *

Dinner that night was an interesting affair. Harmony learnt that the Ministry was providing cars for the trip to King's Cross. All joking aside, Mr. Weasley told them that they were just doing him a favour. Harmony knew full well from what intel her mother had given her on the workings of the Ministry that Arthur worked in a relatively obscure department and was not wealthy enough to warrant this sort of thing. Therefore only one conclusion could be reached, the Ministry was doing this for Harry's security given Sirius Black was supposedly a follower of Voldemort and had escaped Azkaban.

Some parts of the books Harmony had read on that man didn't add up. For example, a gas explosion—Sirius Black had blasted the street open by puncturing and igniting a gas main—was highly unlikely to only leave a single finger, and there was no way it would leave a pile of blood-stained robes without chunks of meat enclosed in some way or other, but they said the biggest bit of Pettigrew they found was the finger. Granted, it was one of the pieces that could just come off and fly away from a body being caught in an explosion while the rest of the flesh was liquefied by the concussion of the blast, but it shouldn't have been remotely intact after bouncing off the ground a few times (or rolling along it for that matter) with how the flesh would have been emulsified by the overpressure.

"Ron hasn't put all his new things in his trunk yet. He's dumped them on my bed." Percy was bitching to his mother

"You'd better go and pack properly, Ron, because we won't have much time in the morning." Ron scowled at Percy for the aforementioned whining.

After dinner, most of the crowd seemed full and sleepy, so they headed up, Harmony and Hermione sharing a room with Ginny, since Harmony had told Mrs. Weasley that she would sleep on the floor. Hermione dismissed the sudden voices coming through the walls as just another Weasley argument, typical of brothers. However, someone who was used to terrorist attacks on their home at least once per year for as long as she could remember (and, from the subconscious memories she'd dug up over the summer, since she was born) wouldn't let things slide so easily. Hence Harmony found herself walking down the stairs with Harry, en route to get Scabbers' rat tonic, when she held up a hand in a "stop" gesture and then slinked silently closer to the parlour door, listening for a moment. Picking up Harry's name, she motioned him over.

Mr. Weasley was grousing "It makes no sense not to tell him. Harry's got a right to know. I've tried to tell Fudge, but he insists on treating Harry like a child. He's thirteen years old and—"

"Arthur, the truth would terrify him!" Mrs. Weasley said rather shrilly. "Do you really want to send Harry back to school with that hanging over him? For heaven's sake, he's _happy _not knowing!" In an instant the temperature seemed to drop five degrees Celsius outside the parlour as Harmony's left eyes twitched in sudden outrage. Her opinion of Molly Weasley had just taken a very, very steep downturn, because if there was danger it was best for the innocents to know about it so that they don't do something immensely stupid. Hell, even _Hermione_ knew that there was a risk associated with being their mother's children, although they didn't tell her yet that no, contrary to her hypothesis, it was not due to some kind of underworld connections or being on the wrong side of criminal empires in the past. If the teachers or Weasleys didn't tell Harry about whatever this was before his first attempt to wander out of the school, Harmony would tell him.

"I don't want to make him miserable, I want to put him on his guard! You know what Harry and Ron are like, wandering off by themselves—they've even ended up in the Forbidden Forest! But Harry mustn't do that this year! When I think what could have happened to him that night he ran away from home! If the Knight Bus hadn't picked him up, I'm prepared to bet he would have been dead before the Ministry found him." Arthur sounded incensed and a bit tired.

Molly replied with "But he's _not _dead, he's fine, so what's the point—"

"Molly, they say Sirius Black's mad, and maybe he is, but he was clever enough to escape from Azkaban, and that's supposed to be impossible. It's been a month, and no one's seen hide nor hair of him, and I don't care what Fudge keeps telling the _Daily Prophet,_ we're no nearer catching Black than inventing self-spelling wands. The only thing we know for sure is what Black's after—"

"But Harry will be perfectly safe at Hogwarts." The two outside the door shared a look and an eye-roll at that.

"We thought Azkaban was perfectly safe. If Black can break out of Azkaban, he can break into Hogwarts." Mr. Weasley said grimly.

"But no one's really sure that Black's after Harry—" Molly was cut off by Arthur pounding his fist down on the table.

"Molly, how many times do I have to tell you? They didn't report it in the press because Fudge wanted it kept quiet, but Fudge went out to Azkaban the night Black escaped. The guards told Fudge that Black's been talking in his sleep for a while now. Always the same words: 'He's at Hogwarts… he's at Hogwarts.' Black is deranged, Molly, and he wants Harry dead. If you ask me, he thinks murdering Harry will bring You-Know-Who back to power. Black lost everything the night Harry stopped You-Know-Who, and he's had twelve years alone in Azkaban to brood on that." Harmony frowned _Hmm, if he's smart enough to break out of Azkaban, without help, mind you, because Mouldy-shorts is still super-weak right now, he can't be deranged enough not to be able to count the seasons. Why bother doing it now when Harry's in third year? Wouldn't first year, when he's weaker, younger and even more foolish, be better? It's not like he was digging a tunnel out of Azkaban with a toothpick, they'd have reported it, so why'd it take so long for him to break out? Something doesn't quite add up here…_ she mentally chuckled at the way she was thinking of Sirius Black, then realized something _Right, he WAS a professional, whether Death Eater or light side trooper, he was a professional, so there's nothing technically wrong with thinking him every bit as slippery as an escape artist…_

"Well, Arthur, you must do what you think is right. But you're forgetting Albus Dumbledore. I don't think anything could hurt Harry at Hogwarts while Dumbledore's headmaster." Harmony suppressed an eye-roll at this, though she saw that Harry didn't bother suppressing the same motion "I suppose he knows about all this?"

"Of course he knows. We had to ask him if he minds the Azkaban guards stationing themselves around the entrances to the school grounds. He wasn't happy about it, but he agreed."

"Not happy? Why shouldn't he be happy, if they're there to catch Black?" Molly asked sharply. Harmony realized suddenly that the woman was expecting the human guards who worked at Azkaban, not Dementors.

"Dumbledore isn't fond of the Azkaban guards. Nor am I, if it comes to that… but when you're dealing with a wizard like Black, you sometimes have to join forces with those you'd rather avoid." Harmony mentally snorted _Uh, no, you do NOT put any faith in dark creatures who'd join the dark side at the drop of a hat, no, scratch that, that would require the effort of lifting the hat so it can be dropped in the first place, the Dementors would join the dark side without even being asked._

"If they save Harry…"

"…then I will never say another word against them." Mr. Weasley sounded tired. "It's late, Molly, we'd better go up…" Harmony motioned Harry to run for it as she followed silently down to the bar, out of sight of the parlour.

She tapped his shoulder and pointed at the bottle of rat tonic lying on the floor of the darkened pub under the table they were at earlier. He nodded and picked it up before they both waited for the elder Weasleys to enter their bedroom before Harmony motioned so that Harry knew to follow after her as she moved up the stairs. She was about to speak when she noticed something was different from the last time she'd been here "Show yourselves." She hissed.

"It's just us, Harmony, Harry." Fred and George identified themselves only after Harmony realized the targets matched the profiles of the twins, still, she was getting slow… too slow…

"I TOLD YOU ALREADY, I DON'T HAVE IT!" Ron bellowed from the room he was sharing with Percy, though it was very muffled by the walls of the inn.

Fred and George snorted, showing Harry something "We've got it, we've been improving it." The badge now read _Bighead Boy_. "What have you guys been up to?" George waggled his eyebrows at that.

"Nothing that concerns you." Harmony replied coolly "We need some privacy right now." She dragged Harry into his room, ignoring his mumbled protests and the twins' huge grins as she shut the door and locked it. "Listen here, Harry, something doesn't add up. They wouldn't find a readily identifiable finger if Black really blew up a gas main under Pettigrew like the books claim, the blast would have torn the flesh from the bones if Pettigrew couldn't shield himself in time. So, whatever you hear, Harry, make sure you maintain doubt, question everything, it's a good survival strategy." She stared him in the eyes until he nodded, then spun around before realizing that the kid probably needed some manner of reassurance, reversing her spin so that it didn't end up being a 360 "If you need help, I'll always be there for you… question that too if you wish." She grinned at him before continuing in a more serious vein "Still, we know now why Fudge let you off so easily, as you told us earlier while we wandered the Alley. It's also probably why he wanted you to stay away from Muggle London, and why we're getting the ministry cars tomorrow. Still, I have a strange feeling that Black is no threat, and I know you won't let this news spook you regardless. Good night, Harry." She turned away again and left, closing the door behind her.

"Well, saying goodnight to Harry certainly took you a while." Fred waggled his eyebrows, although both twins knew they couldn't have been up to too much given the short time.

Harmony shrugged "Meh." Sometimes, it was best not to give a fuck.

* * *

A/N: Review replies!

**Nenfaer**: I know full well no one likes the "slow updates" warning. They are only hunting down species not worth subduing or not possible to subdue. Nundus are walking toxin factories, their products are easy for terrorists to use as biochemical weaponry, and conventional labs could produce the same products anyway. Quintapeds were useless anyways except as terror weapons. Dragons would probably be not hunted and kept around. The enzymes are mostly there to cleave and activate the other reagents in the venom. Note however that it is not very efficient in terms of volume of venom needed versus armour penetration, most it'll ever be useful for is anti-infantry. Marge died by shock from frying alive in her own heated-up lard, a much nicer death than she deserved. We talked on PM about the Disturbed songs.

**To all other readers, look up the lyrics for the songs mentioned at the end of the last chapter and think about POA!**

REVIEW!


	3. First Dementor Encountered

A/N: SI Slogan might be quoted from Rosa Luxemburg: "Freedom means Freedom for those who think Differently". Then again, with how little they put up with religious fundamentalism, probably not. Perhaps Claude Adrien Helvetius then? They don't have problems with religious or other texts… unless you're reading out of them while throwing a torch at a pile of lumber someone's tied to or something like that (cough oppression of free-thinkers by Inquisition cough) in which case the Shepards will have you mown down without mercy.

Does anyone else think that Tonks could, in a long-past life, been related somehow to Tzeentch? In particular, could she have been a Pink Horror of Tzeentch? Lol just kidding, the pink hair and transformations got me to that thought…

* * *

Chapter 3: First Dementor Encountered

_Hogwarts Express, September 1, 1993_

Well, if there was one thing nice about Crookshanks, it was that when he wasn't trying to make himself look huge including standing more tiptoe than normal and arching his back while fluffing up his fur, his back actually was shorter than Ron's knee height, which meant he was significantly shorter than the girls' knees. In other words, people didn't start screaming about tigers upon looking at him. Yes, there were double-takes because he was still a very huge cat, but at least no one tried to curse him for his size. Unfortunately, when he loafed down in the wickerwork basket Hermione had gotten him, it still meant a very large basket for Hermione to carry about.

They entered the platform without incident other than an eye-roll from the brunette twins when Percy walked over to his girlfriend with his chest thrust out so she couldn't miss the shiny Head Boy badge. Harmony felt a poke of annoyance at Harry and Ginny both turning away to hide their laughter. _Couldn't they be more discreet about their consensual amusement?_ Her brain decided to insert a mental spit-take and obnoxious throat-clearing coughing and hacking at this point in her thoughts. _Wait, that sounds wrong… Well, whatever, you'd think I never tried to teach Harry anything about keeping his expressiveness in check… right, didn't think I needed to given he grew up in an abusive household… how the hell did he turn out to be so nice then? And naïve too? He's either got the brains of a concussed jock or… he's just got a pure soul, in other words, he's a total idiot. Wonder what it would be like to rub some of my special brand of spiritual tarnish onto him, right, never mind, people like him would probably mentally ignore a reality check anyways._ This was a painfully depressing thought, because the Wizarding World had very little hope of ever realizing the eighteenth century was over at this rate.

The four third-years and Ginny traipsed down the train past the packed compartments to the last, empty carriage. The boys managed to get their own trunks onto the train this time and shoved them under the seats with some difficulty before the girls strolled in. Harmony and Hermione were towing their wheeled trunks—The Wizarding World seriously needed to learn the uses of the wheel, since the sisters had had to retrofit their trunks to have the wheels—and Harmony was holding Ginny's trunk by its handle with her other arm. Ginny had here eyebrows raised at how Harmony seemed to have no problem whatsoever with the weight of the trunk. Hermione was, at the moment, talking to Harmony regarding the elder girl's insistence that she haul the youngest Weasley's things and how she should have shared the load by having Hermione pull both the wheeled trunks.

Ginny met Ron and Harry's gazes before rolling her eyes pointedly toward the ceiling for a moment to make her point. Unfortunately for the redhead, Harmony had been about to manoeuvre to move her way into the compartment they'd chosen, so she'd looked back and saw it. "Hermione, it's only been a minute since you've see Ron, don't tell me you're already having withdrawal from not arguing about something with him and are looking for an argument as a result? You were fine when the summer started…"

Hermione stopped talking, worked her jaw up and down a couple times, then said flatly "What are you talking about?" Harmony had shoved her way into the compartment by now and stowed the stuff under seats and in overhead compartments. Ron appeared very interested in rifling through his bag, his face rather redder than usual. Hermione facepalmed and sighed in exasperation, a response Harmony hadn't expected. It seemed she had underestimated her sister… even without the training Harmony had under her belt, they were still twins, she shouldn't have missed that.

"We should go say good-bye to your Mum and Dad." Harry suggested to Ron to try to break the awkwardness.

"Uh, yeah, let's do that." Unfortunately, Ron managed to bump into Ginny on the way out and she nudged him the other way sharply enough that he ended up falling on Hermione. The tall brunette turned herself enough that she had Ron lying across her lap, blinking up at her awkwardly before she sprung up again and shoved him back onto his feet.

As they were leaving, Ron and Hermione not looking at each other and both eager to get out of the confines of the train as fast as possible, Harmony asked Ginny "On purpose?" She got a small shake of the head from the girl before glumly realizing Hermione had the same superior hearing she had and had glanced back sharply to catch the tail end of the shake. A small twitch of the corner of Ginny's mouth gave Harmony the answer she expected after Hermione looked away.

Mrs. Weasley kissed all her children, then Hermione, Harmony (who stiffened at the contact) and finally Harry. "Do take care, won't you, Harry?" She straightened up—testament to Harry's short stature given she wasn't even as tall as Harmony or Hermione—with her eyes shimmering a bit, clearly from worry, and opened her enormous handbag, saying "I've made you all sandwiches… Here you are, Ron…" The youngest Weasley son tilted his head at his mother in a silent question as he accepted the package "no, they're not corned beef…" Ron smiled as Mrs. Weasley looked around "Fred?" She looked at one of the twins for a moment before asking him "Where's Fred?" George indicated by an eye-flick, Molly turned and rolled her eyes at her son's antics, as she considered hiding over your mother's shoulder to be behaviour suitable for perhaps a two-year-old "Here you are, dear." She gave the labelled package to him.

At the same time, Harmony caught Harry being led away by Mr. Weasley and drifted a bit toward the pillar they'd gone around. She caught Mr. Weasley saying "…something I've got to tell you before you leave—"

"It's all right, Mr. Weasley, I already know." Harry's voice replied.

Harmony could almost hear Mr. Weasley blinking once before he said "You know? How could you know?"

"I — er — I heard you and Mrs. Weasley talking last night. I couldn't help hearing… Sorry…"

"That's not the way I'd have chosen for you to find out…" Mr. Weasley sounded anxious.

"No, honestly, it's okay. This way, you haven't broken your word to Fudge and I know what's going on." Harry said quickly.

"Harry, you must be very scared—"

Harry interrupted the elder Weasley again "I'm not, really. I'm not trying to be a hero, but seriously, Sirius Black can't be worse than Voldemort, can he?"

"Harry, I knew you were, well, made of stronger stuff than Fudge seems to think, and I'm obviously pleased that you're not scared, but—"

"Arthur! Arthur, what are you doing? It's about to go!" It seemed Mr. Weasley was doomed with the affliction of talkus interruptus, Harmony mentally noted dryly, finding with a eye-flick around that Hermione had been listening in too with a frown. A horrible thought suddenly struck her. _If Harry doesn't get on in time there is no way in hell I'm running alongside the train and throwing him in through a window, then clinging onto something on the side while we pass over a bridge that leads to a tunnel, forcing me to find a way in quickly like in so many damned movies… What the hell is wrong with my brain running amok today … maybe Harry's Moronic Noble Git Syndrome is infectious?_

"He's coming, Molly!" Mr. Weasley called back "Listen, I want you to give me your word—"

"—that I'll be a good boy and stay in the castle?" Harry sounded gloomy.

"Not entirely… Harry, swear to me you won't go looking for Black."

"What?" _Yeah, that was what I thought too, Harry._ Harmony's mind replied to the boy's flat words, well, technically word, but whatever.

"Promise me, Harry, that whatever happens—"

"Why would I go looking for someone I know wants to kill me?" Harry's words made Hermione nudge her sister with an elbow and a small, familiar-looking smirk that made Harmony's alarm bells ring. If her sister became too much like her, then… this was not good, not good at all, they'd probably end up being evolutionary failures instead of having one reproduce while the other acts as a bulwark against danger and was fed into the grinder of their family enterprise! As the elder twin, Harmony found this UNACCEPTABLE. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, but Hermione was still right, Harry did repeatedly go look for people he knew wanted to kill him, at least once per school year if you only counted the big encounters.

"Swear to me that whatever you might hear—" Arthur it seemed was doomed to not finish even a single sentence in this exchange as he was interrupted again.

"Arthur, quickly!" Mrs. Weasley, now no longer in the middle of a horde of redheads, yelled as steam billowed from the train and it began to move. The twins bounded up the stairs into the train in a single leap and slammed the nearest compartment's window open so that they could reach out and seize their boys (Ron had lagged behind to wait for Harry) if need be. Thankfully, this turned out to be unnecessary, even though something in both of them flickered a bit at the idea of not getting the chance to drag the boys in through the window. From the twitch in Hermione's brow Harmony surmised that the younger girl wouldn't mind falling onto the long seat of her side after dragging Ron onto herself. Of course, the elder sister found this mildly amusing, and the idea of yanking Harry in by the collar, dumping him on his feet, and then having both of them loom over the prospective couple was somewhat more amusing.

For obvious reasons i.e. the lack of need for a Weasley tomato or a tomato with unruly black mould growing on top, Harmony elected to keep her mouth shut as the boys entered the compartment the three girls (Ginny was there too) were in. They all crowded to the windows to wave at the family ,embers until the train turned and they were out of sight. Fortunately, the boys were too young to realize that since they were so much shorter they and Ginny got the bottom half of the window and the larger girls the top half, some squishing occurred. They didn't notice beyond Harry's raspy complaint of "Harmony, your armour's crushing my ribs against the window-sill!"

Harmony blinked and pulled back a bit from the fragile kid. _Damn, I'm still not tall enough to completely bend him over and stack up in terms of head to head and foot to foot quite yet… at least, not without the use of high heels._

After Ron and Hermione were finished laughing—Hermione had banged her head on the window frame pulling back and Ron had laughed until she smacked the back of his head rather gently as she too laughed, for far more mature (read: dirty) reasons than Ron's laughter—Harry muttered to the three of them "I need to talk to you in private."

"Go away, Ginny." Ron snapped at his sister, Harmony's hand snapped out and slapped him just before being smacked aside by Hermione's attempted intercept. "What was that for?" He asked as the twins glared at each other.

"Being a prat toward your only sister. Ginny, did they give you any counselling or psychological help after the Chamber other than me talking to you about it?"

The younger redhead seemed to shrink a little under the intense gaze of the brunette "Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall did talk to me a few times per in the last couple weeks of school… they helped too."

"Good, I was so relieved it was over I neglected taking care of you. Now, Harry, anything you have to say can be said in front of ALL of us. Let's go down to our compartment."

They found their compartment one person fuller than when they'd left, although to be fair most of their stuff had been stowed in the storage cabinets of the hallway, so it wasn't absurd for someone to look in and assume only one or two students were here. Harry and Ron had been lazy bums who didn't want to manoeuvre their trunks into the compartment and didn't have multi-compartmented trunks, so their stuff was much bulkier than the girls' stuff and therefore most of the groups' stuff in terms of volume was outside the compartment. Every other compartment seemed to be occupied—the one they'd just left had been garrisoned by three gossiping fourth-year girls—so they'd have to make do. The man sitting nearest the window on one side was wearing a set of very old, shabby robes that had patches in some places, and looked sick and tired, brown hair greying despite his apparent youth. "Who d'you reckon he is?" Ron stage-whispered.

"Professor R. J. Lupin." Hermione replied immediately.

"How d'you know that—" Ron's sentence ended with a rapid fade to inaudibility before he added "never mind…" Hermione smiled at him noticing the small, battered briefcase on the luggage rack over the man's head, and the name stamped on one corner. "Wonder what he teaches?"

"That's obvious, there's only one vacancy, isn't there? Defence Against the Dark Arts." Hermione replied quietly.

Ron had a glum look for a moment before saying "Well, I hope he's up to it… He looks like one good hex would finish him off, doesn't he? Anyway…" The redhead turned to Harry. "What were you going to tell us?"

Harry's explanation had Ron an Hermione both looking rather horrified. Harmony, on the other hand, was nonplussed "If he comes after you with intent to hurt YOU, Harry, he'll be getting a lot of ten-millimetre ventilation. However, why would he break out now to come to Hogwarts? Surely if he's sane enough to break out he could have done it when you were in first year, weaker and easier to deal with than now? Still, what my twin probably wanted to say, which is for you to be careful and not look for trouble, still applies, just in case Black is after someone else at Hogwarts. Who knows, maybe he's after Snape for a schoolboy grudge or something and only recently learnt he was at Hogwarts."

"A schoolboy grudge between Black and Snape? I think you're being too wishful, Harmony, and how thick do you think Harry is, to go looking for a lunatic who probably wants to kill him?" Ron asked, then added with a daydreaming expression. "On the other hand, if he was in fact after Snape, maybe they could off each other…" the younger brunette smacked him on the arm "Just joking, Hermione…" Ginny snorted and rolled her eyes at this, barely resisting the urge to make whipping noises. Ron continued after Hermione stopped glaring at him "Then again, given Hogwarts has been less safe than Azkaban from what we've seen so far, and the fact that he's supposed to be the first one to escape Azkaban in recent history… He was top security too, so breaking into Hogwarts isn't going to be too hard for him, I'd say."

Hermione had raised an eyebrow at him and paused for a moment before saying "But they'll catch him, won't they? I mean, they've got all the Muggles looking out for him too…" Harmony didn't like how her sister had such a low estimation of Ron's day-to-day intellect i.e. doubted him so badly. yes he began at Hogwarts a dumbass and sometimes talked before thinking, but after his crush on Hermione began he had been working as hard as possible without being too obvious to outsiders. He was surprisingly managing to keep up with Hermione's pace in some areas of academics although he was a bit lacking in extracurricular reading.

"What's that noise?" Ron suddenly said.

Harmony was about to answer that it was Harry's Sneakoscope—stalking someone via cameras had their ups and downs—when she realized she shouldn't know and joined in the looking around the other four were doing. She did notice her sister glance at her once with a slight brow-twitch that could have been the beginnings of a frown, but… unless Dad gave her training while they were in France… _Uh oh… I guess Dad did give Hermione some training to make sure we could all survive without me constantly being on duty…_

"It's coming from your trunk, Harry." Ginny pointed out.

"I'll get it." Harry reached under the seat and pulled out his trunk and located the Pocket Sneakoscope, which was spinning very fast in his hand and lit up brightly.

"Is that a Sneakoscope?" Hermione leaned in for a better look.

"Yeah…" Ron smiled a little bit, in clearly a self-depreciating way, before adding "mind you, it's a very cheap one. It went haywire just as I was tying it to Errol's leg to send it to Harry."

"Were you doing anything untrustworthy at the time?" Hermione asked him.

"No!" Hermione lowered her eyelids at him a bit in an unimpressed expression and he sighed "Well… I wasn't supposed to be using Errol. You know he's not really up to long journeys… but how else was I supposed to get Harry's present to him?"

"Stick it back in the trunk, or it'll wake him up." Ginny said, gesturing at Lupin with her chin.

Harry shoved it in an ugly yellow pair of socks which managed to cut down the sound quite a bit, before shoving it in his trunk wrapped in several more layers of clothes, making it effectively inaudible to everyone except Harmony and Hermione (to Harmony's then-knowledge, because technically Lupin could hear it too, he just chose to tune it out). "We could get it checked in Hogsmeade. They sell that sort of thing in Dervish and Banges, magical instruments and stuff. Fred and George told me." Ron suggested.

Hermione zeroed in on that and looked suddenly interested "Do you know much about Hogsmeade? I've read it's the only entirely non-Muggle settlement in Britain—"

"Yeah, I think it is…" Ron was trying to sound nonchalant. From Hermione's eyebrow-twitch Harmony surmised her sister had considered Ron's attempt an utter failure. "But that's not why I want to go. I just want to get inside Honeydukes!"

"What's that?" Hermione tilted her head in what Harmony recognized as her sister's attempt to look cute.

"It's this sweetshop where they've got everything… Pepper Imps—they make you smoke at the mouth—and great fat Chocoballs full of strawberry mousse and clotted cream" Ron was gesturing grandly and grinning at Hermione, who merely looked bored and disappointed unlike how most other girls would react to chocolate. Ron's voice started to trail off as he took notice a few seconds earlier than Hermione expected and a few seconds after her expression was apparent. "…and really excellent sugar quills, which you can suck in class and just look like you're thinking what to write next…" He decided to shut up before he dug himself into a deeper hole given Hermione's schoolwork obsession.

"But Hogsmeade's a very interesting place, isn't it? In _Sites of Historical Sorcery_ it says the inn was the headquarters for the 1612 goblin rebellion, and the Shrieking Shack's supposed to be the most severely haunted building in Britain—" Hermione prattled, Ron frowned a bit in concentration before nodding, a gentle look at his surface thoughts told Harmony that he knew the second part but had just absorbed the first tidbit.

The older sister cut the younger off, since Ron's description of Pepper Imps and their effects sounded exceedingly unlikely to her and she'd need to get some samples for the SI Psionic Labs to analyze. "Ron, are there any other candies that have interesting effects?"

"Well, there are these massive sherbet balls that make you levitate a few inches off the ground while you're sucking them…" Ron trialed off.

Harmony's eye twitched, so something like that _might_ have been where the Allies got some of their Hover Tank technology from back during the Psychic Dominator Disaster… Then again it was also the sort of thing that sounded like Jesus walking on water, so there wasn't much credibility involved. The objects needed to be actually tested for chemical components that could through taste bud based neurons stimulate some part of the brain to project a telekinetic field that could nullify gravity… Even if it was only possible as a result of the alternate brain wiring of witches and wizards it would be a breakthrough. Analysis of the fields could speed the design of hover vehicles for SI or help improve VTOL aircraft , an option that the Allies had not allowed them back during the Psychic Dominator Disaster and which they had seemingly abandoned nowadays due to the limitations of current hover tech, in particular the weight restrictions.

Hermione had turned away from Ron the moment he started talking about candy again and was looking at Harry now "Won't it be nice to get out of school for a bit and explore Hogsmeade?"

"'Spect it will," said Harry heavily. "You'll have to tell me and Ginny when you've found out… if you want to know." He looked to his right at the younger redhead who had been listening quietly to the bigger (literally) kids talk.

"What d'you mean?" Ron asked quickly.

"I can't go. The Dursleys didn't sign my permission form, and Fudge wouldn't either."

Ron's expression was of utter horror "You're not allowed to come? But… no way… McGonagall or someone will give you permission—" Harry laughed hollowly while Ginny smiled and rolled her eyes at Ron. Harmony snorted while Hermione looked rather un-amused. "…or we can ask Fred and George, they know every secret passage out of the castle—"

"Ron!" Hermione cut him off sharply. "I don't think Harry should be sneaking out of school with Black on the loose!"

"Yeah, I expect that's what McGonagall will say when I ask for permission." Harry's shoulder's slumped. Harmony, who was leaning against the window wall, put an arm around his shoulders in a gesture of comfort. She looked meaningfully at Ginny, who patted the black-haired boy on the back reassuringly.

"But if we're with him, Black wouldn't dare—" Ron tried, looking pointedly at the front of Harmony's robes. Unfortunately Hermione didn't realize he was talking about the myriad weapons her twin carried and if the frown was any indication thought Ron was ogling her older sister.

"Oh, Ron, don't talk rubbish! Black's already murdered a whole bunch of people in the middle of a crowded street. Do you really think he's going to worry about attacking Harry just because we're there?"

"Well he should, Hermione, he should be worrying about ME." Harmony butted in.

"We can't let terror rule our lives, Hermione…" Ginny said quietly. Harry nodded and Harmony grinned "It's what they want, the fear empowers them…" Hermione sighed, conceding the matter for now. The silence continued for quite a while before an annoyed meow came from the basket on the rack over Hermione's head.

"Oh, sorry Crookshanks!" Hermione stood up abruptly and brought the basket down, unfastening the straps. "Harmony, Black doesn't know about you so he'll attack anyways, and it only takes one shot…" It was Harmony's turn to sigh in defeat.

"Don't let that thing out!" Ron said, but it was too late as Crookshanks sprang from the basket, stretched, yawned and jumped onto Ron's knees. Scabbers was trembling in Ron's breast pocket as the boy shoved the huge cat away "Get out of here!"

"Ron, don't!" Hermione snapped as the cat jumped over her lap to the empty seat on the other side, settling down nearest the compartment's corridor-side wall. That side of the compartment had Lupin, Ron, Hermione and Crookshanks in that order, while Harmony's side had her, Harry and Ginny in that order, beginning at the window side of the compartment. His big yellow eyes remained fixed on Ron's top pocket as he loafed there like a big ginger cushion.

Harmony spent the next few hours worming her way through Harry's mind searching for information she'd missed in past scans and to update the information she had already leeched from him. If she had anything to say about it, Harry would be free of the Dursleys permanently soon. It was a pity she didn't know him back when he lived in that cupboard, because bringing down the police and social services on the Dursleys complete with reporters would have been far too much for Dumb-odour to contain, but now it was much harder to prove enough to put them all in jail for life. That meant they'd need to resort to more… terminal methods to erase the stain on humanity those critters represented instead of destroying their lives and watching them as they suffered. She didn't bother contributing to the debate on whether or not to wake Lupin up when the lunch cart came by, nor did she bother speaking in the confrontation with Malfoy and his gang—although it made her certain that Lupin had woken some time ago and was pretending to sleep. She did however ask Ginny something when it began to rain outside and the sky grew darker and darker "Where's Luna?"

"Uh…"

"You should go invite her over, she could use some more friends…" Ginny frowned in thought and probably at herself for forgetting her oldest female friend, then nodded and left the compartment to go look for Luna. The train started to slow down a moment later. "Damn, I need to change." With that, before anyone could say anything about privacy, she pulled her hoodie off and donned her school robes over the body armour, ammunition pouches and submachine gun (positioned horizontally across her belly just under her breasts). "I assume Dad gave you some hardware too, Hermione?"

"No guns, but yes for everything else." Hermione took off her own hoody to reveal her body armour over her undershirt.

"You guys have guns? Aren't they illegal?" Harry asked. British, indeed, European gun control laws were very strict unlike in America.

"Not if you have a license." Harmony said simply as the train continued to slow while Hermione donned her own robes. They were required for school functions like the Welcoming Feast after all…

"What's a gun?" Ron asked.

"Muggle weapon, throws a small metal projectile at very high speed using gunpowder, which is an explosive, to propel it down the barrel of the gun, which is a tube that provides the projectile with direction like how a wand provides direction for a spell." Harmony stated. "As we know, very fast objects are very dangerous when they hit you and punch through you, hence smaller guns are very effective against targets with inadequate armour coverage while larger guns can do more damage."

"Interesting way of compensating for not having magic, but wands are still much more flexible at what they can do than a gun." Ron noted. Harmony's jaw set a bit at the insult and the bigotry Ron was showing. He needed to revise his typical pureblood condescension or she would not stand for him courting Hermione. Just the firing rate of automatic guns meant that one gunman could overwhelm at least half a dozen magic-users with little difficulty. "Well, I for one will be altogether too glad to get to the Feast, it's been a while since lunch."

"We can't be there yet, Ron, not by the time." Hermione said.

Ron frowned as the corridor lamps flickered on "So why are we stopping?"

The wind and rain sounded louder and louder as the sound of the engines and the wheels on the tracks faded away. Harmony pulled out her submachine gun, disengaged the safety lock, and toggled it to full auto with a click (technically there were two clicks, from safety to semi-auto, then full auto, but they were close enough together to not matter). Without warning, all the lamps went out as the train ground to a halt, Harmony peered out the window suspiciously, was it an ambush of some sort? The power failure seemed to suggest it… she set the safety on again but didn't lock it before grabbing the accessory she needed for this occasion.

* * *

A/N: Trains do not stop with jolts unless they hit something, and luggage falling out of racks would be lethal if first-years often can't lift them, therefore I call bullshit on JKR.

* * *

"What's going on?" Ron asked. Harry had stood and put his face against the window to look outside, so Ron didn't have space given Lupin was taking the window seat and Harry was in the middle of the window.

"Ouch! Ron, that was my foot!" Hermione scolded him as he stood.

Harry felt his way back to his seat, using Harmony's hair as a navigational aid. "D'you think we've broken down?"

"Don't know…" Ron was less discrete than Harmony or Harry, as he actually wiped a patch clean on the window before peering out "There's something moving out there," Ron said. "I think people are coming aboard…"

The compartment door suddenly opened and Harmony switched on the tactical flashlight she'd just affixed to her weapon's right-hand-side Standard Mounting Rail (the gun had three SMRs and an SSR—Standard Scope Rail—on it). Neville's round face was illuminated as he, suddenly blinded by the bright light, fell in over Harry's legs "Sorry—d'you know what's going on? Damn that's bright… sorry…" He was squinting as he pulled himself up with Harry's help. Harmony noted that Lupin had awoken and was observing the proceedings.

"Hullo, Neville." Harry greeted.

Neville was still squinting trying to clear his vision after Harmony pointed the flashlight away from him "Harry? Is that you? What's happening?"

"No idea, sit down…" Neville backed up and tried to sit before Hermione could warn him. There was a loud hissing and a yelp of pain as Crookshanks vehemently protested Neville's attempt to sit on him.

"I'm going to go and ask the driver what's going on." Hermione said, before Harmony growled in the negative.

"No, it would be better to bunker down for now, an intel run is too dangerous given we are near the end of the train, unless we move as a unit and take cover wherever possible in the halls. Either we all go or none of us go, although having so many high-value targets in one area is dangerous in this sort of action if the opponent has area-of-effect weapons." Harmony was donning her helmet with its combat goggles and put on her gas mask just in case. "I recommend you also wear your gas mask in case they are attacking with non-skin-absorption gas. Sorry guys, but we don't have any extras readily available right now."

The door opened again and the flashlight twitched a bit from where it was pointed up toward the ceiling. "Ginny, good to see you made it safely." Hermione said. The two girls were still squinting a bit as they looked around.

"Get seated so I can turn the light off for now." Luna moved toward the seat next to Neville and Ginny moved toward their side too. Harmony realized what she was going for and smirked as she turned the light off.

"Not here! I'm here!" Harry said hurriedly.

"There's no room, Harry, so deal with it. Most guys would be fine with having a pretty girl sit in their lap." Harmony snapped at him "Now be quiet and stay still."

"Good advice." A hoarse voice said from Lupin's corner. "I can help cover if we're going to move out." Before anything could be done though the compartment door slid open again and Harmony again shone the yellow LED flashlight she was using into the opening. It put out about 100 lumens, which meant about 1000 candela when focused in a 20-degree cone. The cloaked figure illuminated towered to the ceiling, its hood drooped down completely over its face. A hand protruded from the cloak, looking greyish, slimy, and flaky, it was clearly what had been used to open the compartment. The hand withdrew and the Dementor drew a long, slow breath, beginning its psionic assault on all of them.

Harmony saw Harry's eyes roll up in his head and his body go limp. The only thing keeping him from sliding to the floor was Ginny, who started trembling "None of us are harbouring Sirius Black. Go." Lupin growled at the Dementor as Harmony tightened her grip on her weapon, the creature was trying to duck out of the bright light. With what it was doing to Harry, Ginny, and apparently also to Luna and Neville now that she'd gotten a better look, Harmony wasn't about to let this continue any longer.

Harmony remembered her mother's words supporting a certain hypothesis: "Happiness is not the opposite of despair, hatred is not the opposite of love, no, it is indifference that is antithesis to all of them." She recited before summoning up as much IDGAF (I Don't Give A Fuck) as she could and hurling it mentally at the foul thing along with a telekinetic wave demanding its mass take a flight. There was the sound of a wonderful impact of a soft object with a hard one as the Dementor hit the far wall of the corridor, just above the line of cabinets where the larger trunks went. It slid down the wall before pushing itself off feebly and sweeping off.

"What did you do?" Lupin asked her. He had his wand out and had been about to do something when she did her thing.

"I willed it to fly away, right after I hit it with the largest mental mass of indifference I could muster." She said simply. "You heard what I said before I did it, no?"

Lupin peered at her with a small frown, probably considering it some sort of wand-less magic, which was apparently considered impressive even though every magical child could do it accidentally. "Yes, I did hear… It seems to be worth investigation."

Harmony nodded, then, after the train started moving again and the lights came back on, assumed the Dementors were gone and began issuing orders "Hermione, hold onto Ginny. I'm going to wake Harry up." She lifted the shivering girl—no doubt still stressed from reliving what Tom put her through last year, although Harmony reckoned Ginny was lucky not to have been raped physically by Tom—off Harry. She had to hold him in place with a leg preventing his stiff form from sliding off now that Ginny was no longer there to keep his legs from going stiff in line with his body. Then she forced his legs to bend… by pinning his lap down with most of 220 pounds of soldier (the gear she was wearing weighted well over 40 pounds). Then she slapped him a couple times before giving up that approach. She opened her water bottle, took a swig, swished it around, and swallowed before taking another mouthful… and spraying it over Harry's face.

Unfortunately, the boy tried to buck upright so hard that there was a dull thump when he head-butted Harmony's reinforced gas mask (she was, after all, considerably taller than he was). "Oww…" he said, rubbing his forehead before opening his eyes "Harmony, what are you…" He caught sight of the bottle of water and turned a bit green "Oh god…" He started frantically wiping his face with his robes while Ron chuckled weakly. Neville and Luna seemed to be recovering slowly while Ginny was still vaguely catatonic. Hermione seemed to be frowning as she assimilated the new information on how to resist Dementors.

"Are you okay?" Harmony asked intensely.

"Yeah…" Harry said.

_SMACK!_

"When someone's giving you a first aid assessment, answer honestly, Harry. You need some stimulants, and probably sugar and fats for energy… to help replenish what the Dementor drained from you."

Harry nodded quickly, hoping not to get smacked again "Where did the Dementor come from? And who screamed?"

"No one screamed, Harry, it was just part of your worst memory. It's what the Dementors of Azkaban do, draw out your worst memories and, while you drown in despair, leech away your energy. That's why we need to go find the snack lady and buy more choc—"

There was a loud snap and Harry tried, and failed, to jump, although Ginny, Ron, Luna and Neville all jumped and Harmony whipped off him with her SMG levelled at the source of the sound and ready to fire in a fraction of a second before tucking it away just as fast. Lupin was breaking a large slab of chocolate into pieces. He handed Harry a particularly large piece "Here, eat it. It'll help." He finished distributing the chocolate to the affected kids, while offering smaller pieces to Hermione and Harmony since they had seemed less affected or in Harmony's case completely, well, indifferent. Actually, she was affected, but it was small enough that she could hide it after being blasted by her mother so many times with the same psychic attack.

"No thank you, sir." Harmony declined politely.

"Well, alright then." He kept it for himself instead, leaving it in the wrapper and on his seat. "I need to speak with the driver, excuse me." With that, he left the compartment.

"Are you sure you're okay, Harry?" Hermione asked anxiously.

"He should be provided that chocolate isn't poisoned and he eats it, I don't think Lupin feels like dying so chances are he didn't poison it." Harmony said, patting her holsters.

"I don't get it… What happened?" Harry said stupidly.

"Your worst memory was so bad you passed out." Harmony deadpanned rather honestly, seriously wondering as to Harry's IQ if he didn't hear any of what she'd been telling him so far. Evolutionary biologists had been perfectly right to say that sexual reproduction was like taking random parts from either of two unreliable cars and throwing something together. You could get two new cars where one would be anywhere from a perfect condition car to a pile of junk and the other would be the corresponding alternative condition (e.g. mildly reliable vs. mildly unreliable or perfect vs. junk). It seemed that Harry had inherited the worst parts of both his parents at least in the mental department…

Hermione was much more eloquent "Well… that thing… the Dementor… stood there and looked around… I mean, I think it did, I couldn't see its face… and you… you…"

"I thought you were having a fit or something." Ron shivered a bit "You went sort of rigid and if Ginny wasn't completely immobilized on top of you you'd probably had slid to the floor or something."

"Lupin told the Dementor Black wasn't here, but it didn't move. Then Harmony muttered something about indifference being the opposite of fear and did something that flung the Dementor into the corridor wall and made it flee." Hermione explained. "It was something to do with her mindset, I think."

"It was horrible." Neville sounded like he'd breathed some helium "Did you feel how cold it got when it came in?"

"I felt weird… Like I'd never be cheerful again." Ron said grimly. "Harmony's information was correct, painfully so."

"But didn't any of you… fall off your seats or almost do so?"

"No, Ginny was shaking like mad though."

"Comfort her, Harry, you saved her in the Chamber, now it's time to save her from memories of that place." Harmony whispered in his ear before beckoning Ginny over to the two of them. "You're not weak, Harry, you've just seen more horrible stuff than most other people. If you heard screaming… there's only one occasion I can think of, given what I know of you." She didn't specifically state what occasion, although sadly he seemed as clueless as Ron and Hermione, which was just depressing given this was the "Chosen One" she was going to have to baby-sit through this no doubt approaching Second Voldemort War.

After Lupin came back, he noticed no one had started eating the chocolate and smiled "I haven't poisoned that chocolate, you know…" Harry started eating, and so did everyone else with chocolate, Lupin grabbing the bit of chocolate and wrapper he'd left on his seat. Taking a bite, he said "We'll be at Hogwarts in ten minutes. Are you all right, Harry?"

"Fine." Harmony decided Harry was beyond saving from his Noble Git angst and self-depreciation and decided to stay quiet and alert until they stopped at Hogsmeade.

There was a great scramble to get off the train once it stopped, and the icy rain continued coming down in sheets. Hermione and Harmony had both brought compactable umbrellas, something seemingly still beyond wizard-kind if the umbrellas everyone else had was any indication. After greeting Hagrid who was, as usual, bringing the first-years to the castle via boat, the seven kids climbed into two of the stagecoaches taking the students up to the castle. They smelled of mould and straw, as they did last year. Ron, Hermione and Harmony occasionally glanced at Harry to make sure he was doing alright. Harmony suspected Harry's male ego hated it, but at the moment she didn't give a shit about whether or not the boy insisted on being a moron.

No, she was busy loading the one incendiary grenade she carried into her grenade launcher. If it was organic and could feel discomfort, then it must be vulnerable to a combination of white phosphorus, thermite and ammonium nitrate. The two Dementors at the gates radiated their usual Depression Leeching auras, but Harmony brushed it off indifferently, thus avoiding most of the effects. Neither attacked, which kept a firefight from breaking out.

"You fainted, Potter? Is Longbottom telling the truth? You actually fainted?" Malfoy accosted them halfway up the stone steps to the castle after they disembarked the carriage, his face gleeful and his grey eyes glinting.

Harmony glanced around enough to see that the next carriage had yet to disembark before kicking Malfoy in the shins and yanking him forward, thus throwing him down the stairs to land in the mud with a splat. Her wand was pointed at Crabbe and Goyle in her right hand—still by her side so it was discreet—and she said impassively "Move or fly further than he did."

The two thugs parted silently and Harmony led the four of them up into the entrance hall without resistance. Behind them, they heard Malfoy speak insolently to Lupin after he helped the blonde up, clearly not respecting the man due to his shabby appearance. Some things never changed, it seemed.

* * *

A/N: I think Harmony CAN actually pull off a "saves almost everyone in pretty much one piece" by baby-sitting Harry a lot…

Reply to **Nenfaer**: Nundu toxin extraction is some else's project (Cough USA in WW6 cough). Harry is hopeless so Harmony's not going to bother teaching him, he's too stupid to learn how to really do what's right (putting down rabid beasts or locking them up for life with no way out), not what's easy (trying to redeem them) anyways. Check your inbox for a PM (As of April 15, 2013).

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	4. Time and Time Again

A/N: The title refers to three things, although the last is easily the most obvious.

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Chapter 4: Time and Time Again

_Hogwarts, Scotland, September 1, 1993_

It was highly annoying, Harmony thought, that raincoats were useless with robes, you'd get wet from the thighs or maybe knees down anyways as the water runs off the raincoat. Of course, there was always the option of wearing a cloak, but Harmony didn't like the mobility restriction of that. She didn't like the mobility restriction of an umbrella either given how her accuracy with single-handed SMG fire was nowhere close to her pistol accuracy. That was mostly an artefact of the compact SI-built SMG family, because they were bullpup configuration and thus the centre of gravity was far behind the grip (resulting in absurd barrel rise when fired one-handed without bracing). This did however mean that shoulder-bracing allowed disturbingly high power and accuracy for the weapon's overall size and very easy dual-wielding, although the weapons would only be able to traverse slightly faster than the user's torso.

"Potter, Granger, Shepard, I want to see you three!" Professor McGonagall called to them. Since she was standing on some steps leading up, the voice carried well enough over the heads of the chattering crowd that even Harry immediately noticed.

The four of them started dozing their way through the crowd… well, Harmony did, the other three strolled along in her wake of repeated applications of "excuse me" "coming through" "please move" and, in one case, "be somewhere else", the last was to Malfoy and goons along with raised fists as a threat.

"There's no need to look so worried, I just want a word in my office." Harmony blinked and looked around to see the other three looking sheepish. Apparently they didn't do blank faces like she had done. "Move along there, Weasley." Ron waited for the three of them to nod at him before moving off.

McGonagall led them up the stairs and along a corridor, Hermione and Harry walking behind Harmony in what their footsteps said were relaxed and completely relaxed states respectively. Harmony on the other hand was in her idea of a neutral state where she was idly scanning the hallway without any weapons out, in fact, her holsters even had their clasps fastened. Once they entered McGonagall's office at roughly the same time that Harmony spotted Madam Pomfrey entering the hallway from the other end, they found a cosy room with a large fireplace—_how grossly inefficient a use of space and oxygen!_ Her mind commented mockingly, given magical heating could have been used instead— and the Professor motioned for them to sit down. "Professor Lupin sent an owl ahead to say that you were taken ill on the train, Potter."

There was a soft knock before Madam Pomfrey opened the door and entered. Harmony noticed Harry flush in embarrassment "I'm fine, I don't need anything…" He muttered. Harmony set her jaw in sudden anger and resisted the urge to make him need something by punching his face in until he learnt that sometimes you should just accept help when people offer it.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" Pomfrey put a hand to her forehead and sighed before threading the fingers through her hair, bending down to scrutinize him closely "I suppose you've been doing something dangerous again?"

_This is Harry Potter we're talking about, with Voldemort's spirit still after him, his entire existence is dangerous, no thanks to whichever imbecile put him with his so-called "relatives". Honestly, whoever thinks those freaks are worthy of being called human have some nerve, and if they aren't human then clearly they can't be related to Harry since Noble Git, be it of the Moronic, Imbecilic, Dumb Fuck, or whatever other variety or combination thereof. As we all know, the Noble Git strain is—unfortunately for the average IQ of humanity—still a sub-set of Human._ Harmony's mind snapped back almost instantly, but she remained silent.

"It was a Dementor, Poppy." McGonagall had just supplied, exchanging a pissed-off look and grimace with the Healer, who clucked her tongue derisively.

"Setting Dementors around a school. He won't be the last one who collapses. Yes, he's all clammy. Terrible things, they are, and the effect they have on people who are already delicate—"

"I'm not delicate!" Harry snapped back.

"Of course you're not." Pomfrey was now taking his pulse.

"What does he need? Bed rest? Should he perhaps spend tonight in the hospital wing?" McGonagall asked.

Harry jumped up "I'm fine!"

Harmony had decided she'd had enough of his idiocy for one day and yanked him back into his seat, although she pushed on the back in time to prevent him from tipping over to the floor before spinning herself to practically pin him in his chair as she shouted in his face "SHUT UP HARRY POTTER!" The other inhabitants of the room twitched slightly in their seats at the volume. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT DEMENTORS DO? THEY MAKE YOU RELIVE THE WORST EMORIES OF YOUR LIFE, AND GIVEN WHAT HINTS YOU'VE SHOWN ABOUT YOUR HOME LIFE I'D SAY THE WORST MEMORY OF YOUR LIFE WAS THE NIGHT THAT FORCED YOU TO GO TO THE DURSLEYS, NOW WHO DO YOU THINK WOULD HAVE BEEN SCREAMING ON THAT NIGHT? ANYONE ELSE WOULD BE A GLIBBERING MESS AFTER ALL YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH AND WHAT YOU HAD TO RELIVE" Okay, so that was a bald-faced lie, most people, who were less stupidly emotional would shake the memory off much easier since they'd never known their parents anyway, but this angsty, stupid teenager was an exception "BUT YOU ARE STILL REASONABLY SANE AND THAT MEANS THE OPINION OF ANTS LIKE DRACO MALFOY SHOULD NOT EVEN BE A PART OF YOUR SONSIDERATIONS AS TO WHETHER OR NOT YOU SHOULD GO TO THE HOSPITAL WING."

McGonagall seemed to catch herself just in time from snapping at Harmony, deciding to observe the effects of this approach first before being upset at Harmony for potentially damaging Harry's eardrums. Hermione's mouth was silenced with a violent glare from her older twin. "How… how'd you know I thought of what Malfoy would say?" Harry did his best to keep the conversation away from the Dursleys, he didn't want anyone finding out about that.

Harmony could see into his mind easily with how much he seemed to trust her instinctively, and she complied on this one. It was best not to push things too far at once with these over-sensitive macho idiots, so she said softly, quietly as she leaned in close. In less glorified terms, she was dialling up the feminine charm after the initial smash into submission, although she had a low charm cap given she wasn't soft enough to press into him enough. "I know you, Harry, better than you think." She traced a finger tip that poked out of her fingerless gloves along his jaw line as she spoke, and his breathing hitched a bit "We all care about you, but we aren't pitying you, as you could probably tell by my shouting at you, people don't pity people by screaming at them, and I don't do pity, period." She heaved a sigh and left her lips with a small gap between them instead of their usual tense pressed-together state "Every time something that's good for you happens, Draco Malfoy starts picking on you out of jealousy, don't you see that? If you went to the hospital wing after an accident, he'd pick on you because you got yourself fixed up faster than you would have healed otherwise. People like him want to see you stay hurt, that's why they pick on you for finding help, so that you won't seek help in the future. Manipulation has many faces, Harry, some will harm you, like Malfoy's manipulations, while some will help you, like what I'm doing right now." She smiled as some faint glimmer of intelligence actually seemed to enter his eyes for once instead of the usual blank stare or empty, fanatical courage. The other three inhabitants had taken to watching the exchange attentively, although Harmony picked up a slight feeling of being a third wheel from Pomfrey and Hermione. "I realize that you're trying to push me away so that you can think more clearly, that is good, it means you understand now." She pulled herself back to standing on her own two feet "One last thing, Harry, if Malfoy's opinion still seems to matter so much to you even though three of the four Houses don't give a fuck" Her hand shot out to cover her sister's mouth before Hermione wrenched it aside and huffed, but the purpose was achieved as she did not interrupt "what Malfoy thinks, maybe you should be concerned about whether or not you are attracted to him."

"WHAT?" Harry seemed to finally come to life as he spluttered indignantly and looked as if he was about to dry heave.

_He's still got a LOT to learn. I feel that I should despair as to teaching him to actually have a brain, but some part of me genuinely wants to help him… I don't understand why, but I want to help him…_ "Calm down, Harry, he's obsessing over you all the time and you're worrying about what he would think all the time. You should really consider not caring about him so much, otherwise people are going to talk and your popularity will probably get even more annoying thanks to the fact that most girls seem to think that two men going at it is hot. Guess what, Harry, you can't please everyone, and some people aren't worth pleasing. Hermione, Ron and I are behind you unless you're trying to hurt yourself—and no, you are not allowed to cut yourself to test that statement, I will punch your lights out if you try—" he snorted weakly at the attempt at humour "so you should know that you have the friends you need already, including Neville and other people who are friendly with us. You must learn how to consider what's good for yourself instead of what will please others, otherwise Malfoy might ask you to jump off a bridge without any safety measures sometime and you might actually" _be dumb enough to_ "do just that for fear of what he'd think of you otherwise."

"I honestly don't feel that I need the hospital wing though, at least not this time."

Harmony's train of thought violently exploded at this awesome display of imbecility, the right response would have been "I understand" but it seems Harry was only equipped with enough brain cells to stay mentally welded onto that one issue. Maybe being hit by the Killing Curse when he was younger killed half his grain cells? "Remember it for the future then, because I don't think you need it either. You just needed some energy to refill what the Dementor drained from you and to understand that what the Dementors show you is not important to the here and now anymore. We can't forget our painful memories, which for some of us are our mistakes, but Halloween Nineteen Eighty-One was not your mistake, Harry, so you should put it aside and deal with the present situation as YOU see fit. You've already had some of Lupin's chocolate, that's a good mix of calories and magical recovery stimulants in one, so you'll be fine. You'll continue to be fine as long as you've learned what I've been telling you these past few minutes." The rant ended there.

After a few moments, McGonagall clapped a few times "That was an excellent speech, Miss Shepard, although I wish the diction could have been a bit less foul at times."

"Yes. It's also good to see we finally has a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher who does not have his head shoved up his…" Pomfrey seemed to realize what she was mumbling and censored herself "er, never mind."

"As long as you're sure you're feeling alright, please wait outside while I have a quick word with Misses Granger and Shepard about their course schedules. Then we can go down to the feast together." McGonagall said. Harry nodded and departed, Pomfrey leaving with him. "That was an excellent lecture, Miss Shepard, but I fear you may have crammed a bit too much into it at once."

Harmony's grip tightened on her chair "May I cast a sound dampening charm, Professor?" McGonagall nodded and Harmony flicked her wand before putting it back in her wrist holster and letting her true feelings show "Any teenager who is not an angsty imbecile should be able to understand all of it. Unfortunately for my expectations, Harry is not such a teenager."

"You really care about him, don't you?" McGonagall asked quietly. Hermione looked vaguely surprised at the idea.

Harmony rolled her eyes and threw her arms up in exasperation "Well of course! The Wizarding World looks upon him as some sort of saviour, so I have to make sure he stays alive for as long as I decide to stay in this" _sheeple-filled and in dire need of a proletariat-uprising-slash-peasant-rebellion_ "world." Her fingers had curled like claws and her elbows were on the desk as she leaned forward, rage filling her and wanting an outlet for once, instead of her usual suppression strategy "I'm his friend and it's my duty not only to him but to the Wizarding World not to let him fall, but he refuses to learn ANYTHING and I hate how I can't help him…" She snarled, then with a thump her head hit the desk, and her claw-like hands tipped inward to bury themselves in the hair on the back of her head."…how I can't save him or even Hermione from his own fucking IDIOCY…" She shook a couple times, then went still.

Minerva McGonagall blinked a couple times at this most uncharacteristic display—it was more insane than the idea of Hermione Granger choosing to boycott all her exams for a year—and decided to give the girl some space to recover. After two years of frustrations concerning a crazy boy who insisted on dragging her into mortal peril every year because she wanted to protect him, it was unsurprising that the teenager had cracked, especially with Harry's _modus operandi_ of act first, think later. McGonagall waved Hermione off as she moved to poke her sister's side and waited for about ten seconds before Harmony Shepard finally raised her head. The girl's eyes had lost that fiery, manic gleam they had when she had been venting her rage at the follies of Harry Potter, and were back to their usual lifeless brown. "I am sorry you had the misfortune to see me lose control, Professor McGonagall, Hermione, but I cannot apologize for losing control over people I care about."

"If this is a way to convince me to find a reason not to take house points for foul language because you were acting like a true Gryffindor, well, as the Welcoming Feast starts in…" the Professor looked up at the clock on her wall "…ten minutes and, as Misters Potter and Weasley were so polite to remind me of last year, school does not start until the Feast…" she fake-coughed a couple times before getting back on track "As the scheduling seems to have some conflicts for your courses, I have managed to obtain two time-turners for your use." She opened her drawer and pulled out two golden hourglasses inside rings, dangling from slim golden chains that were obviously supposed to be worn around the neck.

Harmony was astounded, then at once very glad that time loops that do not already exist could not be initiated, because otherwise wizard-kind in their infinite stupidity would completely have destroyed this reality already with fucking around with it to at least try to change all sorts of things. That meant she wouldn't think of using the time-turner unless there was a future version of herself running around somewhere already. Since there was no doubt that wizards, with their considerable lack of physics, had touched their time-travelled selves in the past, time-reversed matter clearly did not behave like anti-matter. McGonagall proceeded to lecture them for some time regarding the regulations surrounding time travel and how they were only allowed to use it for classes. Screw that, she would be using it to get more sleep with the homework she was bound to be getting. It was explainable as being for classes, to make sure she stayed awake in classes and could hand in all her homework.

This whole situation smelled fishy to her though. Why would the third-year classes be cluttered so that some overlapped given Hogwarts courses for Third year and up were like university courses? There was more than enough room to distribute them throughout the week. Why, for one, was Arithmancy overlapping with Muggle Studies? Arithmancy was needed for many of the higher-level magical careers that weren't political in nature, and was considered a respectable subject… _AHA!_ Clearly, the pureblood supremacists had enough control of the school to try to keep anyone sufficiently interested in muggles away from the more prestigious magical careers. It seemed prejudice so thoroughly permeated this society that Harmony might need to tear the whole rotten structure, and probably the near-entirety of the pureblood supremacists, down before they could make anything worthwhile in Wizarding Britain.

_Why the hell is imagining the destruction of a social order so pleasing to my mind? Oh, right, it's because we'll be resetting the cycle of oppression… as is needed to prevent stagnation and annihilation of a civilization or culture…_

After the safety lecture was over, the three females left the room for the feast, picking up Harry en route. Hermione looked very happy and Harmony was also grinning like a madwoman, because if she wasn't going to smile she'd probably start railing at the insanity of giving pubescent children time machines and then get started with overthrowing Magical Britain. By the time they got to the Great Hall, Flitwick (the teachers drew straws in who brought the hat out, apparently) was carrying the Sorting Hat and a three-legged stool away. "Oh… we've missed the Sorting…" Hermione said absently, obviously still thinking about Harmony losing it back in McGonagall's office.

Professor McGonagall turned right to go around the students to the end of the long Staff Table nearer to her seat, and the three Gryffindors walked off toward the Gryffindor Table on the left (if you stood at the entrance and looked toward the staff table, that is). People looked around at them as they passed along the back of the hall. Harry's gait shifted slightly and he gasped as Harmony's hand snapped up to grip his arm tightly. "It has nothing to do with collapsing in front of the Dementor, Harry, you're just famous enough that they'd look around at you even if you're just coming to breakfast tomorrow or something. Being late to the Welcoming Feast probably means they're wondering if you flew a car to school again, this time with us instead of Ron, and that's why they're staring. Remember what they said separated you from Tom Riddle, he let others decide his actions and destiny. You chose your own path. Keep choosing, Harry, will you submit to the choices made for you by others? Only you can answer that." She relaxed her grip and he flexed his arm a couple times as he regained circulation in his forearm and hand, nodding to her. His walking relaxed quite a bit and he looked over the crowd to Ron, who waved at them on Harry making eye contact instead of looking at the floor like he had before. Harmony smiled.

Ron had saved them all seats, and when they sat next to and across from him, he murmured to Harry "What was all that about?" And the black-haired boy started to explain the general outline of events ("McGonagall wanted to know if I was really okay after the Dementor incident, dunno how she knew" insert mental facepalm from Harmony here "but she had Pomfrey take a look at me too. Then she talked to Harmony and Hermione about something.") in a whisper.

Harmony decided to tap Harry's surface thoughts again, not that it was hard with how his mind was unguarded. _Can't tell Ron about what Harmony did… it would be too awkward talking about how she pressed up on me like that, ugh…_ Her mind ran through a (very) short set of possibilities as to what that meant before surmising that _Well, it's about time he started noticing girls, fortunately I seem to have escaped his notice as potential girlfriend material, good, he's at least realistic in his observations of his friends, although he's an imbecile when it comes to his enemies. Most likely, he doesn't like my scalding cold personality, which means he's not quite as stupid as expected since Hero Complex fools tend to want to fix everything and everyone around them to fit their idea of what is good, and he's not trying to throw mental wrenches at me and my plans._ Her mental opinion of the boy went up by a measure that was insignificant compared to the crater the boy had dug his rating into by all the stupid crap he'd pulled in the past two years. Unfortunately, by the time her magical schooling was over, Harry Potter would have dug her mental opinion of him into a yawning abyss that couldn't be bridged.

At that moment, Dumbledore stood up to speak, and the Great Hall quieted. He still had the extremely long silver hair and beard, plus the crooked nose, half-moon spectacles, and colourful, though thankfully not blindingly so, clothes. Harmony felt the respect Harry had for the man from where he was broadcasting it loud and clear next to her and felt sick, since Dumbledore ahd hardly done anything these past two years worthy of Harry's respect. As for why they were sitting next to each other, well, Hermione had taken around the middle of the previous year to most often sitting next to Ron and across from Harry, since she didn't like how her sister and Ron both liked to get their food done with as soon as possible. More specifically, she didn't want to watch them, particularly Ron, who was a bit messier with his speed than Harmony's disciplined efficiency.

Dumbledore started speaking while Harmony was still feeling vaguely disturbed at the blind faith of Harry Potter. "Welcome!" She mentally snorted, _Some welcome the damned Dementors were. Ooh let's station soul-sucking energy-draining monsters around a school just because we have to be seen doing something about Sirius Black._ Harmony mentally spat on the ground _If he really was a terrorist, then by crippling your lives with fear like this he has already won, just like Voldemort had already won until he randomly got blown up by Harry here. Honestly, I think it's some sort of shield his mother did that managed to defeat the Dark Lard (though I doubt he was obese enough to fit that name) because Harry's a prime example of why sexual reproduction is a gamble which can fail epically._ "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! I have a few things to say to you all, and as one of them is very serious, I think it best to get it out of the way before you become befuddled by our excellent feast." _Well, at least he's briefing us on the danger posed by the Dementors, he might be a bit more competent than I expected…_

Dumbledore cleared his throat "As you will all be aware after their search of the Hogwarts Express, our school is presently playing host to some of the Dementors of Azkaban, who are here on Ministry of Magic business. They are stationed at every entrance to the grounds, and while they are with us, I must make it plain that nobody is to leave school without permission. Dementors are not to be fooled by tricks or disguises, or even Invisibility Cloaks. It is not in the nature of a Dementor to understand pleading or excuses. I therefore warn each and every one of you to give them no reason to harm you. I look to the prefects, and our new Head Boy and Girl, to make sure that no student runs afoul of the Dementors." Dumbledore paused again and looked around the hall with a very serious face. "On a happier note, I am pleased to welcome two new teachers to our ranks this year."

Harmony would probably have upended the table were it not for her training and lack of total naiveté, not to say that she wasn't still somewhat naïve… the thoughts cascading explosively through her mind proved this. _WHAT THE FLYING FUCK HE DIDN'T TELL US THAT DEMENTORS CAN SUCK PEOPLE'S SOULS OUT! EVERYONE WHOSE FAMILY IS DARK ENOUGH TO TRY TO FEED SOMEONE ELSE TO ONE OF THOSE THINGS KNOWS, BUT THE MUGGLEBORNS AND MOST OF THE HALFBLOODS DON'T? THIS IS JUST ASKING FOR A FUCKING DISASTER TO HAPPEN… Wait a second, a few martyrs and we'll have a legitimate excuse for gunning down most of Slytherin House and I can go vigilante on their parents too… hmm… They'd better not touch Hermione though, because the insult to us was part of why I killed Marge Dursley nice and slow, and I ENJOYED IT._ Quite simply, Harmony and Hermione had both been well below average in birth size and weight—they were only 40 centimetres and only weighted 5 pounds each, although they'd only been carried for 35 weeks so it was appropriate for their gestational age. Therefore, talk of drowning "runty/weak/under-bred" life forms had made the janitorial work personal, and it was well known that once a project becomes personal, people put more effort into it. The burning hatred brought on by the woman's abuse of Harry didn't help make the execution any shorter.

"First, Professor Lupin, who has kindly consented to fill the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher." Harry, Hermione, Harmony, Ron, Ginny, Neville and Luna all clapped relatively enthusiastically. The at best tepid applause from the rest of the school prompted Harmony's jaw muscles to tighten a bit in anger. Just because Lupin looked really shabby next to the other teachers in their nice, formal robes didn't mean he was necessarily worthless. At least, that was true in the Wizarding World where he had few, if any career prospects as a result of being the subject of prejudice, unlike in the Muggle world where there was a moderate correlation (advanced maths, another thing Wizards never understood well enough) between appearances and performance. There had been something a bit off about his Psi-signature during their time in the compartment near each other, but Harmony had foolishly not thought anything of it until now when she contemplated why Lupin might look so squalid.

"Look at Snape!" Ron hissed across the table at the two whose names began with the same three letters.

"Looks like he's drowning in his sea of loathing." Harmony remarked, making a reference to a piece of music that wouldn't be released or even composed for years. _Though I doubt he'd be Lupin's broken servant anytime soon._

"As to our second new appointment, well, I am sorry to tell you that Professor Kettleburn, our Care of Magical Creatures teacher, retired at the end of last year in order to enjoy more time with his remaining limbs. However, I am delighted to say that his place will be filled by none other than Rubeus Hagrid, who has agreed to take on this teaching job in addition to his game-keeping duties."

The Gryffindor Table clapped loudest, although the Hufflepuffs proved that the gradient toward the Slytherins in terms of applause was not monotonically decreasing. "We should've known! Who else would have assigned us a biting book?" Ron exclaimed, hammering the table. Hagrid was staring at his hands with a grin hidden under his bushy beard, which showed a timidity that Harmony thought wouldn't go over well with some of the Ravenclaws and any Slytherins who DIDN'T loathe him…

"Well, I think that's everything of importance. Let the feast begin!" Dumbledore waved his hands as a signal and their plates filled with teleported foods and drinks. Harmony's gut churned as usual with the level of opulence and waste that was certain to be happening with the lavish excess of this banquet, but she ate anyways.

The other three seemed surprised they didn't have to pull her over to speak with a victim of Wizarding bigotry and injustice. In other words, they went over to Hagrid after the Feast was dismissed and congratulated him. "All down ter you four, Can' believe it… great man, Dumbledore… came straight down to me hut after Professor Kettleburn said he'd had enough… It's what I always wanted…" He buried his face in his napkin and McGonagall gestured that they should leave.

Once they were back in their common room, Harmony pulled Hermione, Harry and Ron aside. Both boys required sharp pokes to snap partly out of their food comas. If Ron had not eaten much more vegetables than meats at his meals Harmony would have planned to forbid Hermione from potentially dating him in the future. She didn't want her sister to get heartbroken by a partner who'd die of a heart attack or stroke before he could grow old. "Dumbledore didn't warn us that Dementors can suck people's souls out through their mouths if they get close enough to attack like that." Both boys;' jaws dropped while Hermione looked alarmed.

"Everyone knows, right?" The younger, more naïve twin asked.

"No, most parents think it would terrify their kids to know that such an ability existed." Harmony glared at Ron, who stared defiantly back. Good, either being defiant or looking sheepish were acceptable reactions, getting angry at his parents was not. "And Dumbledore didn't want to risk students trying to feed other students to Dementors due to not understanding the magnitude of the consequences. However, what Dumbledore seems not to understand is that anyone dark enough to pull such a stunt would already know, because they're all from the old families who are terrified of progress because it could threaten their power base. Watch out, Harry, Hermione, I can't be there to protect you all the time."

"But… we need to warn everyone!"

"Hermione, how long do you think it will take before a mass panic starts among the Muggleborn students, or those who were born of a Muggleborn and a muggle or are otherwise ignorant of this threat? That's over half the school's population, Hermione, even though eighty percent of Muggleborns never even make it to school because of the wizarding nobility going out and killing them for fun, without consequence, or parents refusing to let them come, saying it's against God or something. Most of those cases you hear where parents kill their children are directly because of the poison of religion closing people's minds. Sure, it's good because it let technology grow and overtake Psionics, but now that the path of the future has already been approximately set, it's time to open people's minds, and that requires abolishing all this fanatical bullshit." In about three years and a bit Harmony would come to look back on similar words and laugh as she learnt that the fanatics were even more foolish than she believed them to be, but that was a story for a later time. "The best we can do now is hope the aura of terror and negativity keeps kids running away from the creatures. Besides, Dumbledore is not going to let them into the castle, so hopefully nothing bad will happen before we either catch Black or he's sighted somewhere far enough for them to pull the Dementors out… or we kill enough of them that the Ministry can't afford sending more. We'd have to find out how to kill them first though. You guys don't need to worry about it, I'll handle it, just stay away from the Dementors, particularly you, Harry, because your memories are horrible enough to drown you and stop you from running away."

Seeing the look in his eyes again she felt exasperation boil up inside her, so she let it out, again, to pound the point home. She pulled her head back before head-butting him, knocking him over onto his butt with the surprise, his hands instinctively grabbing his forehead after landing. "It's not because you are weak." _Although your IQ is obscenely weak._ "Tell me, Harry, if a piece of wood one foot thick can be pierced by a cannon shell while a piece of the same type of wood, one inch thick, can have a pebble bounce off without damage, does that mean the inch is stronger than the foot? Clearly not, right?"

"You didn't have to be so violent about it, Harmony, but I understand what you mean." Harry said, looking up at her with one hand still on the forming bruise.

She sighed and helped him up before dusting his robes off "Good, you worried me there for a moment. Just keep yourselves safe, alright guys?"

"Do you really think we'll let you go off into danger alone?" Hermione deadpanned.

"Honestly? I'd rather not be burdened with protecting others during a dangerous operation like this one, so yes. I know how to handle threats and how to handle myself. You guys do NOT," she turned here eyes from her twin and Ron to Harry "Harry might, but he doesn't think things through enough, so I'm still the one pulling his ass out of the fire most of the time he comes along. I know I sound like I think very little of you all, and I'm sorry for sounding like that, but at least I'm honest, right? At least get some more training and education before you start fighting." She looked at her twin "I've trained for half a decade, Hermione, to be able to stand up for us, I'm not going to let that go to waste by having you guys fall due to inexperience when I'm experienced enough to protect us all for now."

The other three eventually agreed with her regarding dealing with the Dementor issue, although they only verbally agreed on the protection issue. Harmony was satisfied enough with that, so she let it be.

* * *

The next morning, the four of them went to breakfast very early to avoid the potential crowds. The first thing three of the four of them noticed entering the Great Hall was Draco Malfoy telling a large group of Slytherins a seemingly funny story while standing near the entrance, on the left side (looking from the entrance) of the hall near the end of the Ravenclaw table. As they passed, he did an impression of a swooning fit and there was a roar of laughter.

"Ignore him, just ignore him…" Hermione was trying to bolster Harry's absurdly thin skin (which was impenetrably thick when it came to real friends giving good advice).

Harmony however chose a counter-offensive "Malfoy, swooning at the sight of Harry Potter is not good for your public image, or people's opinion of your sexuality for that matter." He bellowed in rage and drew his wand "Before you even start calling me names or—" She sidestepped a hex "Please remember that looking for half your teeth before the start of the first class of the school year is not a good idea." A cutting hex flew by and there was a gasp of pain and shock that was altogether too familiar before Harmony's eyes hardened. _Hermione_. "ENOUGH, MALFOY!" She shouted, noting the almost-as-familiar roar of outrage—_Ron_—from behind her as she flicked her arm hard so that her wand slid most of the way into her hand from the centrifugal force, though only about five centimetres really showed outside her grip. She believed it more reliable to use an entirely mechanical contraption than the magical holsters most wizards who wore them would use. "BOMBAR—" She went silent as a beam of green light passed by her from behind, from Ron's position if her locating by ear was accurate, and hit Malfoy in the abdomen. He doubled over, heaved, and started spitting slugs. "Good work, Ron. Hermione, how are you doing?"

McGonagall had been working on extra paperwork before breakfast, so she had been at the top of the marble stairs in the Entrance Hall when she heard the shouting start from Malfoy, but she arrived only now and stormed over to Hermione to examine her injury. "Miss Granger will be alright, it only grazed her arm and it wasn't powerful enough to really damage her. Mr. Malfoy, fifty points from Slytherin. You're looking at a lot of detentions, assuming I cannot get Severus to expel or at least suspend you for trying to kill another student." Fortunately, the furious Professor thought, the boy had nowhere near the power to get through the sub-dermal buffer Harmony, Hermione and most adult wizards had, although he could have seriously hurt, say, a first-year. These buffers were the same barriers that gave wizards much higher blunt trauma resistance than muggles. However, he had aimed for Harmony's neck, and that was inexcusable even though he wouldn't have actually managed to cut through to anything important even if he'd made contact. "Miss Shepard, please kindly refrain from using easily lethal force against other students, assuming you were about to use the curse I think you were about to use. I will only remove twenty points from Gryffindor for this and give you one detention since you didn't actually fire it, I trust you know full well how dangerous the Blasting Hex can be given your apparent early mastery of it." She was referring to the Troll incident in the girls' first year. "I believe that I will be having words with two men today." She glared up at the Head Table where Dumbledore and Snape had been watching the confrontation. "Mr. Weasley, you'll have a detention as well, you seem to have forgotten how that curse feels despite your own experience being not even a year past."

Harmony nodded curtly "I apologize for my impulsiveness, Professor, but now that Malfoy has been adequately punished for harming my sister, I will not protest the punishment you give me. But know this, Malfoy, and all you who are watching." She looked around the hall imperiously "Should Hermione come to intentional harm, and I will know the difference between accident and non-accident, then the perpetrator's life, or at least several limbs, is forfeit. And don't think of framing anyone either, because I will know, feel free to try my promise at your own peril." She didn't bother questioning Dumbledore's inaction despite McGonagall just having done the same, since she wasn't strong enough to challenge his leadership of the "light side" directly yet.

McGonagall's jaw muscles bulged for a moment of teeth-grinding before she glanced up at the Head Table's only two occupants again and dug a finger into one ear as if picking earwax "I am afraid that I was infected by Severus and Albus over the summer with a condition that inflicts occasional temporarily deafness. However, from the general air you are displaying, I suggest you not repeat what you just said, Miss Shepard. Well, you'll need the new third-year Gryffindor schedules…" She reached inside her cloak and pulled out a small stack of papers, rifling through until… "…here they are."

"Thank you, Professor." Harmony whipped around and marched away toward the Gryffindor Table while Malfoy shouted something about "My father will hear—" before there was the splatter of more slugs hitting the ground.

"Your father will hear of what, Malfoy? You swooning over Harry Potter? I don't think you want him to hear of that, do you? I could send him a letter for you advising him to look out for his family line if you'd like." Harmony turned her heads slightly as she stalked up the Gryffindor Table to where Harry, Hermione and Ron were standing now, next to where Fred and George sat.

"Little git. He wasn't so cocky last night when the Dementors were down at our end of the train. Came running into our compartment, didn't he, Fred?" George said.

"Nearly wet himself." Fred snorted contemptuously as they watched Malfoy stumble from the Hall, none of his cronies wanting to touch him.

"I wasn't too happy myself. They're horrible things, those Dementors…"

"Sort of freeze your insides, don't they?"

Harry interjected with "You didn't pass out, though, did you?"

George huffed while Harmony's fork—the only eating implement she ever bothered with except maybe chopsticks if applicable—began to tremble from the absolute mindless fury only Harry Potter's stupidity could bring about. "Forget it, Harry, Dad had to go out to Azkaban one time, remember, Fred? And he said it was the worst place he'd ever been, he came back all weak and shaking… They suck the happiness out of a place, Dementors. Most of the prisoners go mad in there."

"Anyway, we'll see how happy Malfoy looks after our first Quidditch match, Gryffindor versus Slytherin, first game of the season, remember?" Fred said.

Harmony laughed mentally, mockingly, once she saw Harry look a bit more cheerful as he helped himself to food. _He plays the only position that matters in more than eighty percent of matches, so it's obvious why he gets distracted by the stupidest game ever devised by someone over the age of ten instead of a logical, rational argument…_ Her teeth ground together as she glared at the waste of air seated beside her, totally oblivious to her intense irritation _…like the one I presented to him repeatedly last night._

"Ooh, good, we're starting some new subjects today." Hermione sounded so happy it hurt Harmony's brain to know what her own voice crying out in such joy sounded like. She had a feeling she didn't want to be within earshot of Hermione if her sister ever got into the wasteful habit of masturbating—it consumed so much time that it just wasn't worth it.

Ron was frowning as he looked over at her sheet "Hermione, they've messed up your schedule. Look—they've got you down for about seven subjects a day if you're taking all the electives like you signed up for last year. There isn't enough _time._"

"I'll manage. I've fixed it all with Professor McGonagall."

Ron was chortling merrily as he pointed out certain discrepancies "But look, see this morning? Nine o'clock, Divination. And underneath, nine o'clock, Muggle Studies. And… look, underneath that, Arithmancy, _nine o'clock. _I mean, I know you're like a goddess at studying—" He seemed to stumble over his words for a moment as he realized his slip. She remained oblivious, and her sister rolled her eyes "—Hermione, but no one's _that _good. How're you supposed to be in three classes at once?" Harmony occupied herself obsessing over how "respectable" subjects like Arithmancy and Ancient Runes were specifically scheduled to overlap with subjects like Divination and Muggle Studies. It was another sign of the prejudiced, terrified elite controlling and constraining Wizarding Society for their fear of losing their power.

"Don't be silly, of course I won't be in three classes at once." Hermione snapped.

"Well, then—" Ron started.

"Pass the marmalade." She barked.

"But—"

"Oh, Ron, what's it to you if my schedule's a bit full? I told you, I've fixed it all with Professor McGonagall." Ron fell silent, but still had a frown on his face. Harmony's surface-skim said that he was worried that Hermione would stress herself out too much. That sounded about right for by-the-books Hermione since she'd probably only use the Time-Turner for getting to class instead of for, say, attending class, doing homework, eating meals, and sleeping.

Hagrid dropped by on his way up to the staff table later during that breakfast time. Harmony was packing some food away in napkins and a Ziploc bag, before shoving it in her backpack. "What's the food for?" Hermione asked quietly as they left the Great Hall.

"Just in case we get hungry between all our morning classes." Harmony replied cheerfully.

Hermione nodded in understanding "Ah… makes sense."

"Come with me, I need to show you something." Hermione nodded "Hermione and I need to go to the bathroom, you guys go on ahead." Harmony pulled her into one of the more lavish bathrooms where each cubicle was essentially an en-suite with toilet and sink inside, then cast a sound-buffering charm around them. "They say it's dangerous to see your past or future self, but what if you know that they will be there and by the fact that they are your future they know you are here because they've been here before? I doubt wizards are Physics-savvy enough to know that in theory time-reversed matter should equal antimatter, but that's been refuted by the fact that they haven't blown up half the planet yet. The experiment here is that we're going to pass on the food to those two who should be in this cubicle right about now if future-us remembered correctly." Harmony pointed at the cubicle they were standing outside of.

Hermione looked alarmed at this revelation. "Harmony, you can't do this… It's against the law, we could get into big trouble."

A third voice interjected into the conversation as the cubicle door swung open and a second Harmony showed herself "Just watch me." The Hermione standing behind future-Harmony looked resigned while the Hermione outside looked horrified. The Harmony outside pulled her Hermione into the cubicle and shut the door so they'd have some privacy.

"Well, I suppose the trade went well the first time?" now-Harmony asked future-Harmony.

"Yep. I'm hungry after three hours of classes, and I can bet you that if we didn't think of this, this girl would start losing weight within the first month." Future-Harmony gestured to future-Hermione, who sighed and rubbed her forehead.

"Great, now I have to remember the exact words you said so that the timelines match up. Couldn't you have just nodded or something?"

Future-Harmony grinned and shook her head "The words will come naturally, past-me, time maintains itself well enough to keep time loops consistent, you'll be saying these words whether you want to or not, because I remember hearing these words from me."

"How were the classes?" past-Hermione tentatively asked future-Hermione.

"I'm not going to tell you, because I wasn't told." Future-Hermione shrugged.

Past-Hermione frowned "Oh really? you know, you could make that a lie by saying that it's a lie and then telling me."

Future-Hermione shrugged "Yeah, I remember trying to tell me that, but since I don't remember me caving in, sorry, I can't tell you, uh, me, anything. As I remember being told and am about to tell you or rather be told, it's better to enter with an unbiased perspective. Harmony said she wouldn't have to drag me… er, us… into this sort of thing again if we promised to use the Time-Turners to get enough sleep and homework time to make sure our grades stay up without hurting ourselves in the process."

Past-Harmony nodded "She's completely correct, I wouldn't have to drag you into this sort of meeting too often if you agree to be like me and use the time-turners to support your studies, like making time for extra meals and sleep, not just get from class to class. I have lots of hiding places around the castle where one of us can go to sleep at a time while the other does homework, then we can turn back time and the other can sleep next to the one sleeping first and thus we both get homework done but still watch over ourselves."

"Good one, Harmony, you just ensured my future self could say what she just did without lying in terms of subjective timeframe, at least, given she used the past tense with regards to you saying that." Past-Hermione said dryly "I'm guessing from you being here that I caved into her demands eventually?"

Future-Hermione shrugged "It sounds much more practical than not doing so. We'll see how it works out, we're only from four hours into the future, you know, and we've been doing our homework for most of the last extra half-hour of time we made for ourselves."

Future-Harmony clapped her hands once and reached out toward her past self "The food, please, then we'll be on our way."

"What if someone else sees us?" Past-Hermione fretted. The future twins smiled a bit but said nothing.

Past-Harmony pulled out a shimmering material from her bag "I'm borrowing Harry's Invisibility Cloak until he asks for it back. Futures, you should put this on. You might have stains or something that the past us didn't have when we came in, assuming someone was watching the cubicle door or pays too much attention to us. Ron would probably recognize any changes to your scent, Hermione, with how he follows you like a lost puppy all the time." Both past- and future-Hermione stuck their tongues out at past-Harmony.

A curt nod from future-Harmony later the future twins and their stuff disappeared under the Cloak and the past twins left the cubicle, leaving the door open, and exited the bathroom, laving enough of an interval between them for the future twins to get by. "That was the weirdest thing I've ever done." Hermione whispered.

"Next time I'll just keep the food with me, it's much less trouble and it'll still let us eat enough. We can take a two-hour nap after dinner so that we can do eight or ten hours of homework, then sleep for the night. The point of that exercise was to open your mind to the fact that schooling isn't just classes just like wars aren't just about battles, the logistics are even more decisive in both. We need to stay well-rested, well-fed, and of course do our homework."

The younger girl could only nod in accession to her older sister's dictates, for they made a lot more sense than the alternatives, if any.

* * *

A/N: Astute readers will notice that the only people who can give Harmony massive mood swings seem to be Hermione and Harry, larger than even Jane can give her. This means EXACTLY what you think it means. Note that the awkward moments will cease in fourth year for certain reasons.

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**Nenfaer**: The real power of a Patronus… *redacted*… will be explained at some point near the end of this year. ^_^ Thanks for the commentary.

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	5. Temporal Causality

A/N: Apologies for the delay. Have been playing too much World of Tanks, eating up a lot of my free time.

After reading some of the supports on Fire Emblem Wiki, I suspect Harmony's most similar to Severa in level of bitchiness, but not toward her mother. **Please note that Excellus from Fire Emblem: Awakening is now my mental image of Marge…** I know, disgusting isn't it?

I still am not sure which song Harmony's Overall Theme should be. I mean, her Hogwarts-Era Theme Song would definitely be "Muggle Born Hero" (MY parody of John Lennon's _Working Class Hero_) but afterward it may need to shift to _Eye of the Tiger_ to stay accurate to her life, or maybe _Masters of War_ (though this mostly applies for her battle theme and enemies). Finally, has anyone here played Dark Souls and does Harmony seem likely to have, in past or future incarnations, been the Chosen Undead? (Yes, her lives tend to be just THAT depressing)

* * *

Chapter 5: Temporal Causality

_Hogwarts, Scotland, September 2, 1993_

"Whoever said McGonagall doesn't favour her own house was probably taking Snape into consideration as the reference point." Ron commented as the four of them went hunting for the Divination classroom.

"Well, someone has to balance out the fact that Dumbledore wants us to learn and grow on our own and Snape was probably waiting for me to throw a curse before getting me into trouble, after blocking it for Malfoy somehow." Harmony said. "I shouldn't have let anger take the better of me." Silence descended upon the group as they searched for the North Tower aka Harmony occasionally tweaked their course so that they stayed on track.

Ron was breathing heavily by the end of their seventh long staircase, Harmony noted in mild disappointment, although to be honest this meant he was more fit than she had observed in previous years. "There's got to… be a shortcut…" There was a large painting near them with a bare stretch of grass on it, and Harmony had a sudden feeling of foreboding. If she wasn't wrong, they were about to meet…

While Hermione was being corrected by Ron on her directionality, a fat grey pony had made its way into the painting and was grazing away—or so the Psi-projection was trying to convince them. A short, plump knight clanked his way into the painting a moment later in his armour, apparently having just fallen off.

"Aha! What villains are these, that trespass upon my private lands! Come to scorn at my fall, perchance? Draw, you knaves, you dogs!" He tugged his sword out and began brandishing it about until he overbalanced and landed facedown in the grass.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked, moving closer to the picture. Harmony rolled her eyes, was the boy just stupid or did he never learn the idea of tit for tat? She could imaging her lecturing him on the idea, it would be disastrous, especially if it came after he learnt a bit of slang: _"No, Harry, there is nothing involving sticking a breast out for a tattoo in the concept of tit for tat. Why you would ever make that hypothesis is beyond me."_ Then she'd probably need to explain to him what a hypothesis was. Ugh.

"Get back, you scurvy braggart! Back, you rogue!" The knight used his sword to push himself up… and got it stuck in the grass despite all his subsequent efforts to remove it.

"Listen, we're looking for the North Tower, you don't know the way, do you?" Harry asked once the knight was exhausted. Harmony was unsure about whether or not to approve of this, because exhausted people or rather people's expectations of exhausted people did not include the ability to lead one to somewhere one wanted to go. As a result, a Psionic entity that exists attached to and anchored by the canvases of the castle Hogwarts should also not be able to lead after the group of viewers expect them to be exhausted. However, it was easier to exploit someone while they were tired and not thinking as clearly. The psionic life-forms in the paintings were clearly sapient, but…

Surprisingly, the knight sprang up and seemed to immediately cease being furious. "A quest! Come follow me, dear friends, and we shall find our goal, or else shall perish bravely in the charge!" Harmony's jaw shifted in amusement as the knight tried and failed to get on his pony. _What a medieval attitude… right, that shouldn't be surprising, the Wizarding World is still living in the Middle Ages after all._ "On foot then, good sirs and gentle ladies! On! On!" He ran, clanking obnoxiously, into the side of the frame and disappeared off the planar Psi-projection. They followed him, following the sound of his armour and spotting him running through pictures ahead. "Be of stout heart, the worst is yet to come!" The knight shouted, and Harmony rolled her eyes as they ran after him up a spiral staircase. Ah well, at least he was leading them on the shortest path possible to the North Tower from where they started…

Harry and Ron were both puffing loudly as they arrived… at the point a few steps below the landing below the classroom. Hermione and Harmony were breathing a bit faster than usual, but it wasn't obvious when put next to the boys. "Farewell! Farewell, my comrades-in-arms! If ever you have need of noble heart and steely sinew, call upon Sir Cadogan!" The knight clanked off.

Ron snorted after the knight disappeared "Yeah, we'll call you, if we ever need someone mental." As he spoke, they emerged onto a tiny landing, where most of the class was already standing, even Neville. Harmony was happy for Neville, since he seemed to have gotten over his navigational disability. Most of the class was talking quietly about the plaque on the circular trapdoor in the ceiling.

"Sybil Trelawney, Divination teacher." Harry read "How're we supposed to get up there?"

"Perhaps this is a test? Where is the nearest window?" Harmony's eyes riveted onto the nearest window "Are we perhaps supposed to climb along the outer wall to the appropriate classroom window, blast our way through, and forcibly enter?"

Harry chuckled "only you would think of something like that, Harmony…" Ron, on the other hand, had his eyes half-lidded in a "Ronald is not impressed" expression.

The trapdoor suddenly opened and a silvery ladder descended, right at Harry's feet. Everyone went quiet. "Alright, who's going first to soak up potential enemy fire?" Harmony said to the crowd a moment before realizing Harry was already halfway up the ladder. She sighed and made to follow…

* * *

"This is, without a doubt, among the most disturbing places I have been in thus far in my life." Harmony said simply, although her next part attracted odd, uncomprehending looks from the purebloods or wizard-raised half-bloods. "Given I have visited Auschwitz, Treblinka, the Louvre, several wrecked Psychic Dominators, my aunt's office, and a photo gallery talking about Stalin's various exploits, not all of which are mutually completely exclusive, that says something." What was even more disturbing was the fact that some of the Muggleborns (a minority of the class, unlike how they were a mostly-silent majority of the school) didn't seem to know what she was talking about. _So quick are the young and foolish to forget the bitter lessons of history… particularly when they are separated from their elders for too long. And so we see how the Wizarding World is so successful at isolating itself and remaining archaic evena fter the rest of the world has advanced._

"Where is she?" Ron asked Harry quietly.

"Welcome, how nice to see you in the physical world a last." The voice that suddenly came out of the shadows made Harmony sigh and rub her forehead in frustration at the overdramatic behaviour. Professor Trelawney was a thin woman who had large glasses, a shawl and a lot of chains and beads around her neck that Harmony suspected served little real purpose. The choice of clothing, jewellery and hairstyle reminded Harmony of the stereotype for all gypsies as portrayed by the Nazi propaganda machine in WWII. The hair was not the twins' type of bushy, but the type that would grow into an afro unless violated repeatedly with the vicious fanged implement known only as the hairbrush. "Sit, my children, sit." She said as the class sat, Harmony being the fourth last to sit in one of the armchairs or poufs (these latter things were also spelled/termed "pouffe", "tuffet" or "hassock"). The four were as per usual at the same round table. "Welcome to Divination." Trelawney had seated herself in a winged armchair before the fire "My name is Professor Trelawney. You may not have seen me before. I find that descending too often into the hustle and bustle of the main school clouds my Inner Eye."

Harmony nodded to herself while Hermione frowned, showing which sister read more science fiction and therefore knew more about the theory of time and branching possibilities. _That sounds reasonable, so many choices that might be made, branches where the path of history can diverge, where time loops may need to branch into many circles to ensure their existence despite all possible changes due to already existing… Therefore, being around decision points too much, being affected too directly by them, will damage the ability for psionic prediction._ Harmony thought.

"So you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts. I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you. Books can take you only so far in this field…" Hermione looked more scandalized by her sister nodding sagely at this pronouncement than the announcement itself, and Harmony sighed mentally at her twin. Harry was grinning while Ron patted Hermione's arm a couple times as if to tell her that it was all going to be fine. The younger of the twin sisters rolled her eyes at the redhead and cast off his hand with a flick of her arm. "Many witches and wizards, talented though they are in the area of loud bangs and smells and sudden disappearances, are yet unable to penetrate the veiled mysteries of the future. It is a Gift granted to few. You, boy." She suddenly looked to Neville, whose shyness made him jolt upright so suddenly and stiffly he almost toppled off his seat "Is your grandmother well?"

"I think so…" Neville's voice quavered.

"I wouldn't be so sure if I were you, dear." Trelawney said, and Neville gulped. Harmony nodded slowly again, thinking of how Neville was being forced by his grandmother to use his father's wand. If the woman had an obsession into making her grandson his father, then she was probably in need of a reality check and maybe some help for her mind. "We will be covering the basic methods of Divination this year. The first term will be devoted to reading the tea leaves. Next term we shall progress to palmistry. By the way, my dear," she suddenly said to Parvati Patil "beware a red-haired man."

Harmony snorted loudly as Parvati gave a look at Ron, who was seated behind her and blinking a couple times at her action. The boy spoke what Harmony thought "You DO realize Fred or George probably WILL prank you at some point this year, don't you?" Parvati's mouth opened a bit, then closed before she facepalmed.

"That is one interpretation of it, Mister Weasley, but we shall see, yes? In the second term," Trelawney went on "we shall progress to the crystal ball… if we have finished with fire omens, that is. Unfortunately, classes will be disrupted in February by a nasty bout of flu. I myself will lose my voice. And around Easter, one of our number will leave us forever." Harmony pointed at Hermione with her eyes. Harry and Ron smirked with half their mouths so that Hermione couldn't see them. "I wonder, dear," she suddenly said to Lavender, who was the nearest student to her, and apparently cowardly too as she shrank back in her chair "if you could pass me the largest silver teapot?"

Harmony's mind rolled its eyes _Get it yourself, no wonder you have no muscle tone, unlike me._ She flexed her rather thicker than typical left arm a bit as Lavender did as she was told. _They're not considered attractive by most boys' standards, but they've helped keep me and those I care about alive, and they're a lot better-looking than your nearly helpless state. Why I bet I could break your upper arm just by grabbing it with both hands and snapping it._

"Thank you, my dear. Incidentally, that thing you are dreading… it will happen on Friday the sixteenth of October." Lavender shivered a bit. Harmony sighed, after that sort of pronouncement, ANYTHING bad that happened to Lavender was going to be labelled the thing that made the prediction true. However, it WAS possible that Trelawney could only sense a psychic echo back through time that said Lavender would become very sad on that day and therefore felt that she should forewarn the girl so that it was less of a painful shock. Well, Harmony had obviously been considering the myriad possibilities of Psionics far too much with how her mind wandered all the time… "Now, I want you all to divide into pairs. Collect a teacup from the shelf, come to me, and I will fill it. Then sit down and drink, drink until only the dregs remain. Swill these around the cup three times with the left hand, then turn the cup upside down on its saucer, wait for the last of the tea to drain away, then give your cup to your partner to read. You will interpret the patterns using pages five and six of _Unfogging the Future. _I shall move among you, helping and instructing. Oh, and dear…" She grabbed Neville by the arm as he began to get up "after you've broken your first cup, would you be so kind as to select one of the blue patterned ones? I'm rather attached to the pink."

Harmony sighed "Neville," she called loudly before Neville could get to the shelf of teacups "She's been in the Great Hall before, she'll have heard of your famous clumsiness, besides, you broke your first cup probably more than a decade ago, so you need not worry." The boy's nervous face relaxed slightly as he reached for a cup, although he still dropped it, the soldier-girl's hand was there to catch it "See? Since this is your nth cup, you could not have broken your first in this classroom, and even if we reckon it so, you would now be handling your second cup, and therefore are not certain to do any breaking. Grab another one, I'll use this one."

Neville clutched his second cup rather firmly as he nodded and walked over to the Professor. When Harmony got there, Trelawney fixed her with a smiling look "Very good, Miss Shepard, predictions are as important in interpretation as anything else. I was just making sure Neville didn't break the cups I liked more, given how legendarily clumsy he is, but I was in fact serious when warning Parvati about red-haired men… although I suspect that your interpretation may again be accurate given what I have heard in the Great Hall." She sighed and tapped her head with her free hand "There is only so much I can See, and not all of it is clear, it is one of the wonders of Divination, that the future may be powered or even upended by how much faith those of the present put into which understanding of the glimpses we see."

"I understand, Professor."

"Do you really? I have not had a NEWT student for Divination for a number of years now… people tend to think this class is easy marks most of the time and make things up. Of course, they usually have to since they cannot See, but you… I sense something different about you, you might not even have to make your predictions up, it would be a relief to teach another real Seer for once. On the other hand, yes, the possibilities around you are endless, so you might be just one to shape the future, as you demonstrated just now, instead of a Seer… we shall see…" she noticed Harmony was glaring at the teacup, which was verging on spilling over, and quickly stopped pouring "right, better be careful with that… anyhow, we shall See…"

* * *

A/N: Please be forewarned that there may be repeats of this type of joke in subsequent years. Now, I am about to insert myself into the story, or hint at my future insertion.

* * *

Harmony spent the first five minutes after getting her tea swirling it around the cup and blowing on it instead of Harry and Ron's imbecilic attempts to drink the hot tea relatively quickly. Hermione agreed with her sister's way of doing things "If we were allowed to cast a cooling charm, that would be much faster…" She groused, while Harmony contemplated where the excess kinetic energy of the particles was dumped to when casting such a charm, perhaps a background pool of universal energy of some sort? She had a feeling it would make her head hurt if she thought too much into it.

…Little did she know that she would run into a reasonable (and later found to be accurate) description when reading fanfiction written by a guy she would eventually come to call her best true friend. The fact that he'd managed to also write fanfics that eerily portrayed her Hogwarts life completely accurately did not help her initial impression of him, but he proved useful in the end…

"Cast it on the teacup, Hermione, try not to crack it from thermal expansion stress though." Harmony said as she took her wand out and tried it… to excellent effect as the tea quickly chilled to a bit below body temperature.

"Right, what can you see in mine?" Ron asked Harry while Harmony was slowly drinking her now rather cool tea. They had all opened their books to pages five and six (odd-numbered pages for the book faced toward the back, hence 5 and 6 could face the reader at the same time).

"A load of soggy brown stuff." Harmony smiled and shook her head. Apparently, what Harry thought was a sleepy and stupid state (his mind said it was due to the perfumed room) had a better sense of humour and probably better IQ than Harry usually had.

"Broaden your minds, my dears, and allow your eyes to see past the mundane!" Trelawney called and Harry shook his head as if trying to stay awake.

"Right, you've got a crooked sort of cross…" Harry looked in his book "That means you're going to have 'trials and suffering'—sorry about that—but there's a thing that could be the sun… hang on… that means 'great happiness'… so you're going to suffer but be very happy."

Ron looked amused, rolling his eyes before ticking off his fingers "There are a few possibilities here, the first is that you're seeing things in sequence. The second is that you think I'm a masochist, and for the record I'm not, even given how often I prod Hermione into arguments. The third means you need to see an optician that specializes in Inner Eyes. The last one is that these are just tea leaves that randomly fell all over the place and you're just forcing them into shapes in your mind. Personally, I believe the fourth possibility is the most probable. Well, it's my turn now… There's a blob a bit like a bowler hat… Maybe you're going to work for the Ministry of Magic…" He turned the teacup around "But this way it looks more like an acorn… What's that?" He consulted his book "'A windfall, unexpected gold.' Excellent, you can lend me some… and there's a thing here that looks like an animal… yeah, if that was its head… it looks like a hippo… no, a sheep…" He was turning the cup around as he gave his various pronouncements.

"Let me see that, my dear…" Trelawney had swept over to their table while Hermione and Harmony stared at the soggy hills (i.e. near-perfect cones with bases as wide as the cup's bottom) of tea leaves on the bottoms of their cups, which didn't mean anything according to the book. Everyone went quiet to watch the spectacle as she rotated the cup counter-clockwise. "The falcon… my dear, you have a deadly enemy."

"But everyone knows _that._" Hermione's whisper was so loud it might as well have been of the stage variety. Trelawney leered disapprovingly at her. Hermione shrugged "Well, they do. Everybody knows about Harry and You-Know-Who."

Harmony yanked Hermione over by the scruff of her robes and hissed so that only she could hear "If you let fear cripple you from even referring to him directly, although I don't know why he ever fashioned that name that meant 'theft of/from death' or 'flight from death' in French if he didn't intend for it to be used, since after all names are only good for being used as labels, then he the terrorist has already won. You should know this, Hermione, it's one of the first rules of counter-insurgency, to not allow fear to cripple the populace and undermine their fighting spirit. Clearly, wizard-kind does not understand this, though to be fair most counter-insurgencies in general are glorified exploitative operations that don't pay enough attention to it either." She raised her voice and shoved her twin back into her seat "Call him something more reasonable, because I don't know who, are we talking about Volks-Morty here?"

Hermione's jaw tensed a couple times before she acceded to her supremely dominating sister "Sounds a bit off but I think you have the idea."

Trelawney smirked with the corner of her mouth before going back to Harry's cup "The club… an attack. Dear, dear, this is not a happy cup."

"I thought that was a bowler hat." Ron sounded sheepish.

Harmony snorted "They're not that different, Ron, and both can be true, knowing Harry he probably wants to" _waste his influence and chance to push the Wizarding World into at least the mid-twentieth century—fucking arranged marriages will all be voided or otherwise annihilated, often by means of bullets, as soon as I take over this damned society—since he wants to_ "be an Auror later or do something else in wizarding law enforcement, which is full of danger, not to mention we have to get rid of Mouldy-shorts' remnants first which will entail getting attacked multiple times."

"The skull… danger in your path, my dear, although I would think you know that." Trelawney squinted and then her eyebrows shot up as she gave the cup a final turn "Would you happen to own a large, black, shaggy dog?" She stared at Harry through narrowed eyes.

"Uh, no…" Most of the class was looking alarmed.

"Well, then, it seems you have… well, the Grim."

"The what?" Harry asked dumbly, although he wasn't the only one not understanding, Hermione, Dean and Lavender all looked less than impressed while Ron looked like someone had died.

"The Grim, my dear, the Grim! The giant, spectral dog that haunts churchyards! My dear boy, it is an omen—the worst omen—of _death_!" Trelawney seemed amazed Harry hadn't understood what she was talking about given a whole chapter of the book had been devoted to it—Harmony had read all her books beforehand.

"_I _don't think it looks like a Grim." Hermione said after leaning over to take a look.

"You'll forgive me for saying so, my dear, but I perceive very little aura around you. Very little receptivity to the resonances of the future."

After a few moments of discussion from the class about the thing, Harry got annoyed "When you've all finished deciding whether I'm going to die or not!"

Harmony snorted "Of course you'll die, Harry."

Everyone stared at her, Ron the first to speak "What?"

"Life is something that has a one hundred percent fatality rate, even theoretically immortal beings will fall with the end of this universe, or when they get tired of existing. Even Multiverse-level sentience might decide to change up its personality once in a while basically for kicks, and that's a sort of death of personality, yeah? I bet that everyone has the Grim if they look deep enough. Sooner or later, we all die."

"That is correct, although the Grim is generally considered a rather more immediate omen, it could be interpreted that way. However, I still advise you to be on the lookout for danger, Mr. Potter, or at least, greater danger than you generally get into."

"Alternatively, I could purchase a big, black, long-haired dog to scare him with." Ron stage-whispered to Hermione.

Trelawney was beginning to get annoyed "It could be possible that this is a portent of a future pet, however, as Mr. Potter does not appear to be overly interested in animals, I doubt it. Well, class is just about over now… perhaps I should have left the tea to cool for a bit longer before class given a lot of yours turned out to be too hot to drink dry yet… please pack away your things and leave in an orderly fashion, no one wants to fall down the ladder, no? Oh, and Mr. Longbottom, please try not to be late next time… although it is possible that by saying that and making you nervous I hereby am causing your lateness. Don't worry about it too much, just ask the portraits if you need to. I'm sure you'll be no more than a few minutes late if you remain calm, and I will not take points off for it as I can see it coming from here." Trelawney inclined her head and smiled at Harmony once Neville had nodded and hurried by. Hermione looked uncharacteristically confused as to the whole situation, although she'd recovered by the time Harmony yanked her off to the bathroom to go back in time to a snack and their second first-period class of the day. After that, they went back again to grab some food from their younger counterparts and to their final first-period class of the day.

* * *

Harmony was only alerted to how wide and teeth-gleaming her grin at McGonagall's transformation into a tabby cat—after a lecture on Animagus transformations—had become by her mechanical pencil snapping under her grip. McGonagall transformed back with a pop of displaced air—evidence that the transformation consisted of one possessed animal body being put into extra-dimensional storage and a human body being retrieved for the mind to operate directly—looked around, and frowned "Really, what has got into you all today? Not that it matters, but that's the first time my transformation's not got applause from a class." Harmony's grin faded to a "not impressed" look. If it didn't matter, why comment on it at all?

"Please, Professor, we've just had our first Divination class, and we were reading the tea leaves, and—" Harmony could almost guess what Hermione's next words would be, albeit in more elegant terms than _"Most of the class received a thorough and brutal mind-fucking a la too much sci-fi time effect logic, which was painful due to wizard-kind being absolutely logic-less"_.

McGonagall's look was even more unimpressed than Harmony's "Ah, of course. There is no need to say any more, Miss Granger. Tell me, which of you will be dying this year?"

Harmony realized it might be Trelawney's annual tradition to predict a student's death. Harry, in the meantime, answered "Me."

McGonagall rubbed her forehead and sighed before looking back up "I see… Then you should know, Potter, that Sibyl Trelawney has predicted the death of one student a year since she arrived at this school. None of them has died yet. Seeing death omens is her favourite way of greeting a new class. If it were not for the fact that I never speak ill of my colleagues—" She cleared her throat rather self-explanatorily. "Divination is one of the most imprecise branches of magic. I shall not conceal from you that I have very little patience with it. True Seers are very rare, and Professor Trelawney—" She cut herself off again "You look in excellent health to me, Potter, so you will excuse me if I don't let you off homework today. I assure you that if you die, you need not hand it in."

Hermione laughed, but Ron still looked slightly worried. Once the Transfiguration class ended, they joined the mob surging toward lunch and the Great Hall (in this case, two overlapping objectives). "Ron, cheer up. You heard what Professor McGonagall said." Hermione said as she pushed a tureen of stew toward him, the boy obliging her by ladling some onto his plate.

Ron leaned a bit across the table once he picked up his fork "Harry, you _haven't _seen a great black dog anywhere, have you?"

"Yeah, I have," said Harry. "I saw one the night I left the Dursleys'." Ron dropped his fork.

"Probably a stray." Hermione said calmly.

Ron turned his head slowly toward her, so slow Harmony was half-expecting the squealing of a badly-oiled joint "Hermione, if Harry's seen a Grim, that's… that's bad. My… my uncle Bilius saw one and… and he died twenty-four hours later!"

Hermione didn't even bother looking at him as she poured herself some pumpkin juice "Coincidence."

"You don't know what you're talking about! Grims scare the living daylights out of most wizards!" Ron was beginning to get upset by how she was dismissing him so easily.

"There you are, then. They see the Grim and die of fright. The Grim's not an omen, it's the cause of death! And Harry's still with us because he's not stupid enough to see one and think, right, well, I'd better kick the bucket then!" Hermione said snottily.

"To be fair, Ron, it's been a while since Harry saw the big black dog, the Grim is supposed to be a short-term omen, so the dog Harry saw when leaving the Dursleys' couldn't have been an omen of his death…" she turned to Harry "unless you're secretly a zombie and you're not telling us?" She leaned over and theatrically sniffed at the side of his head—disregarding Harry's awkward attempt to lean away using her height advantage and the element of surprise to dominate him—before pronouncing "No odour of putrefaction, and he smells alive, therefore he cannot be dead yet, or at least, not before the last couple days."

"I think your sister has finally lost it." Ron said after a silence among the four of them. Then he helped himself to the food.

"Hallelujah, you just noticed?" Hermione grumbled as she ate too. Harmony rolled her eyes and smiled, glad that they'd distracted Ron from all this death omen bullshit.

* * *

After lunch, they had the misfortune of being presented with one of Ancestor Kane's more ludicrous experiments…

After clearing the air about the _Monster Book of Monsters_ (Harmony: "So we either stroke their spines or threaten them with lethal implements of death? Malfoy, keep your mouth shut or I'll feed your tongue to my book."), Harmony's first word, delivered in a tone of utmost disbelief, was "Hippogriffs?"

Needless to say, Ancestor Kane was in for a LONG lecture on how being bored for many, many millennia was no excuse for going mad scientist. Also, Malfoy was lucky Harmony wasn't in the mood to finish what Buckbeak… no, Malfoy's own imbecility, started. When Crabbe and Goyle flexed their muscles threateningly at Dean when he snapped at Pansy that it was Malfoy's own fault, Harmony bared her teeth at the two boys and they flinched.

"D'you think he'll be all right?" Hermione said nervously as they ascended the stairs to Gryffindor Tower.

"I hope he dies by falling down the stairs, not by something like that, which can be traced to Hagrid." Harmony said without missing a beat. "Remember, Hermione, before you protest me wishing death on someone, I was born to be a janitor, and it's much easier to take out the trash if it's already dead, although it'll be a different sort of taking out that I'll have to do, literal instead of proverbial."

Harry decided to pretend he didn't hear his friend talking about what he thought of as murder "Madam Pomfrey can mend cuts in about a second."

"I agree with Harmony that it was bad to have it happen in Hagrid's first class, typical of Malfoy to mess things up for him… and I assure you Hermione if I ever hear him wishing death on you again then he is dying whatever the hell you decide to say to me." Ron held up a hand before Hermione even opened her mouth "Before you even ask, it was last year while you were petrified."

The other three were among the first to reach the Great Hall for dinner, hoping to see Hagrid, but he was absent. Harmony was also among the first to reach the great Hall for dinner, but unlike the others she didn't have a problem with the idea of drilling some common sense into Hagrid.

"They _wouldn't _sack him, would they?" Hermione sounded anxious, not touching her steak and kidney pie.

"They'd better not." Ron growled darkly.

Harmony noticed how Harry was watching the Slytherin table. A large group, Crabbe and Goyle included, was huddled together in what seemed to be an intense discussion. "They're making sure their lies match up, too bad this school doesn't have any decent video cameras monitoring the classes. Then again none of the blood-supremacist scum would possibly allow it, and they're the ones with clout in this medieval society." She informed Harry, who seemed annoyed at her vitriol.

Ron nodded at her before saying "Well, you can't say it wasn't an interesting first day back."

Harmony rolled her eyes "You'll find us all quite capable of enunciating the words, Ronald. I suspect Lucius Malfoy will use this as an opportunity to increase his control over the school though, so I suppose we did uncover what could potentially be our conspiracy of the year."

Ron waited until after dinner before saying as they leaned together in the Common Room "What you said about this possibly being our conspiracy of the year sounds about right, but what about Black being after Harry?"

"Who said we couldn't have more than one conspiracy at a time?"

"There's a light on in Hagrid's window." Harry suddenly said, looking out the window and clearly yet again not paying any attention to details that could save his sorry ass.

Ron looked at his worn but well-cared-for watch—Harmony had noticed he tended to take relatively good care of his belongings—and said "If we hurried, we could go down and see him. It's still quite early…"

"I don't know…" Hermione said slowly, glancing at Harry.

"I'm allowed to walk across the _grounds_, Sirius Black hasn't got past the Dementors yet, has he?" Harry sounded mildly grumpy.

"Besides, Hermione, if the Dementors fail, there's always me. Black was a pureblood, and British purebloods don't know squat about guns. Most British muggles don't know enough about them either with the strict laws. It's not curfew yet, should we imprison Harry just because Black escaped from prison?"

* * *

Harmony wasn't sure if Hagrid started with "Expect" or "Suspect", because he said "'Spect it's a record. Don' reckon they've ever had a teacher who lasted on'y a day before." Harmony was glaring at the tankard Hagrid was holding, if he kept up the drinking he really WOULD only last a day.

Hermione gasped "You haven't been fired, Hagrid!"

Hagrid took a rather large gulp of whatever was in the tankard, mead, from the smell "Not yet, but 's only a matter o' time, i'n't it, after Malfoy…"

"How is he? It wasn't serious, was it?" Ron asked as they all sat.

Harmony snorted "Not enough blood for a major artery breach. Definitely not serious, and wrong side of the bone for a major nerve to take damage."

"Madam Pomfrey fixed him best she could, but he's sayin' it's still agony, covered in bandages, moanin'…"

"Maybe the little ferret ought to be reminded that I will show him real agony if he doesn't stop being a whiny bitch." Harmony bared her teeth in a disturbingly wide grin.

Harry conveyed his ignoring of her with a glare "He's faking it, Madam Pomfrey can mend anything. She re-grew half my bones last year. Trust Malfoy to milk it for all it's worth."

"'Preciate the offer, Harmony, but you'd jus' get inter trouble too, 's not worth it." He turned his face toward Harry "School gov'nors have bin told, o' course. They reckon I started too big. Shoulda left hippogriffs fer later… done flobberworms or summat… Jus' thought it'd make a good firs' lesson… 'S all my fault…"

"It's all _Malfoy's _fault, Hagrid!" Hermione snapped.

"We're witnesses. You said hippogriffs attack if you insult them. It's Malfoy's problem that he wasn't listening. We'll tell Dumbledore what really happened." Harry displayed his gross naiveté and incompetence so painfully Harmony wanted to renounce ever having known the boy.

"Don't worry, Hagrid, we'll back you up." Ron was also a bit naïve at times, but at least he kept himself vague and not so heavily committed. Hagrid sniffed and hugged both boys tightly.

Harmony was all business "The best option now would be to have Buckbeak conveniently run away while you're at the Ministry or in some other public place. It's the only chance we have of getting him out alive. Lucius Malfoy is a pureblood supremacist and will try to discredit Dumbledore, so with Dumbledore definitely backing you against the Board of Governors, Lucius will be even more inclined to take this case to the Ministry and generally be a bitch about it. Given the medieval judicial system in Wizarding Britain, their refusal to use Pensieve memories or Veritaserum as ways to gain evidence for fear of implicating their own rotten selves, there is no chance whatsoever that Lucius will be unable to sway them to his will with his money and political capital. Regardless, I think you've had enough to drink." Hermione was the one who grabbed the tankard and went outside to empty it. "You've got to get out of the drinking habit, or you WILL be fired, which would be bad."

"Ah, maybe she's right." Hagrid let go of Harry and Ron, who both staggered away, rubbing their bruised ribs. Hagrid followed and, a few moments later, there was a splash.

"What's he done?" Harry asked nervously.

"Took the water bucket he usually uses to fill his water barrel and dumped a bucket of water over his head. He was going to dunk his head in but I reminded him that contaminating his drinking water was a bad idea." Hermione said as she came back in.

Hagrid came back looking rather more sober. "Tha's better… Listen, it was good of yeh ter come an' see me, I really—" He suddenly did a double-take toward Harry, as if just realizing he was there. "WHAT D'YEH THINK YOU'RE DOIN', EH?" His shout was so sudden that Harmony had her wand out and levelled at him before she realized what she was doing and put it away, but not before Hagrid noticed and smiled with a small shake of his head, glad someone was taking care of Harry, before continuing his rant "YEH'RE NOT TO GO WANDERIN' AROUND AFTER DARK, HARRY! AN' YOU THREE! LETTIN' HIM!"

"When was he ever instructed to this effect, Hagrid?" Harmony asked, almost equally angry "If Harry needs to basically be imprisoned because Black broke out of Azkaban, then Black has already won by the power of fear."

"I know wha'cha mean, Harmony, but 'Arry is a special case, an icon, I'm taking yer all back up ter school, an' don' let me catch yeh walkin' down ter see me after dark again. I'm not worth that!"

"That means we can fly down on brooms?" Harmony grinned freakishly widely just to look creepy.

Hagrid sighed "…should have expected that, I dun recommend it, but t's bit more evasive and safer than walkin', and yeh can turn righ back if you get attacked… but t's a long way ter the ground, y'know…"

Harmony threw her arms up in exasperation as they walked back toward the castle "By everyone's attitudes, they might as well ban Harry from the one thing he enjoys: playing Quidditch!"

"Don't give them any more ideas Harmony…" Harry moaned from his position next to her while Ron and Hermione sighed in unison from Hagrid's other side.

* * *

A/N: Review replies…

**Vorch**: Yeah, I'm not discarding the time turners like JKR did in Book 5, because I figured out a way to make them work without paradoxes.

**Raven3010**: Thank you for understanding (playing too much World of Tanks at th moment to write much). Your English is fine.

**Sfjoellen** (HSCR Ch 11): Harmony hates the idea of relying on pushing someone until they crack, since the result is often unstable and needs to be put down. Therefore she doesn't like the idea of pushing Harry into proper motivation. Besides, putting a bullet in him is easier than fixing him. I already said something about sexual reproduction giving a perfect car and junk pile from two half-broken cars, right?

REVIEW!


	6. No Lack of Courage

A/N: Someone said Harmony is a Mary Sue. I agree, she is more than 20% Mary Sue since unlike every other Muggleborn in Wizarding Britain she has a brain. However, let's look at Harry Potter himself: Everything he does works out for the best in the end or he thinks is justified, his nemesis orphaned him, he is subject to prophecy, he gets sidekicks, he (basically) wins against the bad guy every time, he has no real moral grey, he angsts all the time. Conclusion: I cannot possibly out-Sue Harry Potter with Harmony, however hard I may try. It is IMPOSSIBLE. Also, "love conquers all" is about the cheesiest thing I've heard of since I learnt the definition of cheese.

* * *

Chapter 6: No Lack of Courage

_Hogwarts, Scotland, September 3, 1993 (Friday)_

The day after the injury, Malfoy's right arm was covered in bandages and in a sling, and the brat was playing it up to its limit, including coming into class halfway through the double period of Potions. "How is it, Draco?" Pansy Parkinson asked. Harmony privately thought that if she sounded any more of a suck-up then she might be able to serve as a decent fume hood for the whole Potions classroom. "Does it hurt much?"

"Yeah…" Malfoy fake-grimaced, winking at Crabbe and Goyle once Pansy looked away. Harmony momentarily wondered if Pansy was just that unobservant or if she was just playing along. She came to a third answer as her conclusion: It was orchestrated solely to piss Harry off.

"Settle down, settle down." Snape waved at the Slytherins placidly. Ron's jaw muscle tightened momentarily while Harry scowled much more visibly. Harmony and Hermione rolled their eyes mentally and physically respectively.

The new potion they were making today was a Shrinking Solution, which was used to de-age animals. It technically induced the object to radiate a psionic disguise that made it seem younger, but wizards didn't understand any of that quantitative stuff. "Sir," Malfoy whined… no, _bitched_ "sir, I'll need help cutting up these daisy roots, because of my arm—"

"Weasley, cut up Malfoy's roots for him." Snape said without looking up. Harmony wondered if he'd look up should she hurl a brick at his head, then concluded that while the answer may well be in the negative, he could still intercept it with a spell and do damage to her before she could mow him down.

"There's nothing wrong with your arm." Ron hissed at Malfoy once he'd stomped over to the blonde's table. That wasn't unexpected since though he had more street smarts than Harry he still wasn't completely able to control himself. _Wait, how the hell is the abused kid less able to hide his negative feelings toward others than the kid with a loving family? Oh… duh, right… the twins looking for blackmail material, and sheer number of potentially nosy siblings. That would explain it._

"Weasley, you heard Professor Snape, cut up these roots." Malfoy said smugly, with a smirk.

"Pretend they're Malfoy's fingers." Harmony told him as she stopped in her passing by, to save him the imminent disgrace of having to give Malfoy his own roots because he didn't chop the brat's up evenly enough. "Think of the squealing of the ferret, the squelch of blood splattering from the flesh onto you, the tearing sound of skin and muscle being divided, the delicious crackling of bones parting under the knife as you hack down the pieces into exactly equal fragments, like this…" Harmony yanked out her foot-long combat knife and chopped eighteen grooves into the cutting board in a mere few seconds. One set of roots lying on the board were thoroughly sliced into equally thick disks, and one ferret-faced brat was trembling in his seat, staring at the crazed grin of the girl standing next to his desk, who wasn't even looking at him. "Ronald, stop staring at me like Malfoy is doing."

"Miss Shepard, that was a most disturbing speech. I do not advise you do it again. However, it was an excellent display of what sadism can be like, so I'll only remove six points for that outburst…" Snape's mouth curled "and three for each gouge mark on that cutting board."

Harmony kept the demented smile on "Thank you for the compliment, Professor. Now, Mr. Malfoy, do you want anything else prepared for you? Perhaps this shrivel-fig?" She picked up the offending object from Malfoy's ingredient tray and flayed it in a few moments, grinning as widely as she could while tearing the strips of skin off, before turning a bit, eyeing her sister and friends' stares. "Ron, Harry, Hermione, _get your asses to work on your potions_."

She was coming back from the bathrooms half an hour later (no, she didn't take half an hour to use the bathroom) when she heard Malfoy's drawl returning from wherever she'd scared it off to with "Seen your pal Hagrid lately?"

"None of your business." Ron snapped.

"I'm afraid he won't be a teacher much longer, father's not very happy about my injury—" Malfoy nearly sing-songed.

Ron snorted "Keep talking, Malfoy, and I'll give you a real injury." He seemed about to say something else—Harmony mind-skimmed it to be _"Or I'll point Harmony at you."_—but seemed to think better of it in favour of gathering information. Wow, Ron, you're making yourself a better prospect for Hermione by the minute, since she'll probably pick a Psi-capable, and most of them have, altogether, a total IQ that needs not apply.

"—he's complained to the school governors. _And _to the Ministry of Magic. Father's got a lot of influence, you know. And a lasting injury like this" Malfoy's exaggerated sigh was, to any sound-effects worker, probably so bad it was comparable to the sound of a thousand kittens being crushed to death against a blackboard they were all clawing at desperately. "who knows if my arm'll ever be the same again?"

"So that's why you're putting it on," Harry once again displayed his IQ of a concussed jock as his hand, shaking in anger, accidentally beheaded a caterpillar he was working with. "To try to get Hagrid fired." _Hallelujah give the boy a cookie!_

"Well, _partly,_ Potter. But there are other benefits too." Malfoy whispered, before swapping to a loud, obnoxious voice, not noticing Crabbe and Goyle had fallen totally silent "Weasley, slice my caterpillars for me." The blonde blinked, then squealed in a most undignified way as the several passages of Harmony's knife left air currents that titillated the very fine hairs on the surface of his nose.

"They have been sliced." Harmony said monotonously.

A few desks away, someone who really should not be allowed near a cauldron and who should never be allowed to even enter the door of a chemistry lab was in trouble due to his own inability at fine motor control. Neville was quailing under Snape's frown—Harmony could agree with the idea of being very severe with kids to impress upon them the critical nature of safety in potions labs—and generally being made a fool of "Orange, Longbottom." He ladled some of the potion, which was supposed to be bright green, up and let it splash back into the cauldron "Orange. Tell me, boy, does anything penetrate that thick skull of yours? Didn't you hear me say, quite clearly, that only one rat spleen was needed? Didn't I state plainly that a dash of leech juice would suffice? What do I have to do to make you understand, Longbottom?" To be fair, this class Snape had indeed dictated the instructions as he wrote them on the board, and he'd put special emphasis on those points, AND the potion was in the textbook… If Harmony had taught the class she'd probably have failed Neville out and made him retake the course for every year… but she was a student, which meant she'd use other means to dispose of the public safety hazard that was frequently in the proximity of her precious sister. Harmony's "Dragon Skin" body armour she wore under her school robes could resist chemical attack long enough to strip it off and discard it, but Hermione was vulnerable to many things, including shrapnel from exploding cauldrons. Granted, none had actually exploded yet, more like just bubbling over very violently in a manner chemists called "bumping", the result of bubbles forming with internal pressure greater than atmospheric pressure in a superheated liquid and detonating before reaching the surface, thus splashing material everywhere.

Neville was pink and shaking and looked as if he was about to cry—Harmony wanted to drag him into a sound-dampened room and drill some sense into him—when Hermione spoke up "Please, sir. Please, I could help Neville put it right—"

"Shut up Hermione!" Harmony barked just before Snape spoke.

"I don't remember asking you to show off, Miss Granger. Longbottom, at the end of this lesson we will feed a few drops of this potion to your toad and see what happens. Perhaps that will encourage you to do it properly."

Snape…er… _billowed_ away as Harmony thought _how does he get his cape to do that?_ "Help me!" The clumsy boy moaned to Hermione.

"No, Hermione! I'll deal with this." Harmony stood up and loomed over Neville. She saw Snape glance at her and discreetly incline his head once. "Neville, we can't always be there to help you, but I can help you learn this stuff for yourself. Why do you think Professor Snape looks scary to all the students and even punishes Slytherins if they do something stupid involving the cauldrons? Granted he punishes them a bit less harshly, and it's always detention instead of points but still, he actually works them in the detentions…"

"…To intimidate us into falling in line?" _Wow, he's definitely has a higher street IQ than Harry… no, scratch that, a manhole in a street has a higher street IQ than Harry… right, that once was all too obvious._

Harmony was listening to Seamus, Harry and Ron talk about Sirius Black as she lectured Neville "The point is to scare people into not fooling around. If you like your cauldron blowing itself, you, and probably a few classmates, up, please work somewhere private. Unfortunately this approach doesn't work on people who are too knock-kneed with fear to count the number of a certain ingredient they are putting in or the timing. Don't give me your 'I'm not a Gryffindor' bullshit. You're scared shitless of him and you still come to every class, that's real courage right there, Neville. Blindly plunging into something isn't courage, it's stupidity." She turned her head slightly to look at an oblivious Harry out the corner of her eye "Unfortunately the one who'd really benefit from learning that is utterly incapable of learning anything due to being thicker than the Antarctic ice sheets." The plump-faced boy in front of her frowned at her slur against her friend but was at least wise enough to know it was good, honest advice. Unfortunately her passive-skim from his mind said he didn't know how thick the Antarctic ice sheets were, an alarming testament to the ignorance of the Wizarding World to quantitative things. "The point, Neville, is that you have the courage to keep coming here despite your fear. If you have that much courage, putting your fear aside, calming yourself, and just getting this thing over with is going to be a non-issue for you, got it? Now, unless I'm very much wrong, Snape will continue to hassle you as you display growing confidence and calm in your work to test you. Use this as an opportunity to practice this skill and you will do well. Do you understand me, Neville? Just treat this as an Herbology exercise with lots of liquid stuff and some solids, I mean, we have to mix compost and stuff in Herbology, right?"

"Yes, I suppose…"

"Neville, I hope you don't give yourself food poisoning one day with how bad you seem to be at cooking. Potions basically IS cooking…" fortunately for science, Chemistry wasn't really like cooking, but this wizard needed not know that.

Neville was frowning again by now "…Hmm, maybe I should practice at home sometime… but Gran would probably say it's not a man's place."

Harmony suddenly loomed over him in rage and Neville scooted backward with a defensive squeak "Guess what Neville, seven thousand years ago knowing how to read and write wasn't a human's place, but things have changed since then. A hundred years ago airplanes didn't exist and Muggles couldn't do powered flight, and as little as eighty years ago the tank wasn't invented, so don't you dare tell me your Gran's idea of what is and isn't your place has total control over you! She's family, and an elder, so respecting her is good, but respect does not equal blind obedience. Do you understand me Neville?"

Neville bit his lip for a moment and then tried to crack a joke "…If I said no would you keep on pestering me?" He leaned even further back in his chair as she seemed to grow much larger over him, and she had to catch his chair to stop him from falling "…Yes, I do understand you."

"I hope it is true understanding, Neville, the future is much different from the past, unlike in the past centuries of wizard-kind. It's time to change. Well, let's get this thing done. Now, look at the instructions in my book." She stuck it up to his face "Blank out everything else. There is no Snape here, no reason to be concerned. The only one here is yourself, and the only things here that matter are your potions ingredients… although you have to be careful not to let stupid brats chuck stuff in your cauldron like I saw a couple of the Slytherins doing earlier." _Shifting blame onto someone else would hopefully help Neville think himself more capable than he currently is and let him grow instead of wilt… Hey, maybe his clumsiness is from multiple sclerosis or something, which can be inherited as a predisposition and is probably dismissed by stupid inbred pureblood wizards as clumsiness mixed with eccentricity. Wait, he's good in Herbology, so it's probably just his fear of Snape and Potions that's hurting him._

Harry and Ron were finishing up—Harmony and Hermione had before Harmony had gone to the bathroom—when Harmony finished beating some confidence into Neville. "What did Malfoy mean?" Harry asked Ron at the very ornate gargoyle tap in the lab basin, which Harmony found absolutely ridiculous. "Why would I want revenge on Black? He hasn't done anything to me… yet."

"He's making it up, he's trying to make you do something stupid." Ron said dismissively, drying his hands on his cloak as he turned a bit, but the confused frown he gave Harmony told her that he was only saying it to reassure Harry.

"I know why." Harmony whispered as they passed each other "Talk later." Ron nodded a bit, Harry didn't notice, but Hermione did, and she frowned.

As the end of the lesson approached, Snape stalked over to Neville, who suddenly reverted from his former encouraged state to a teeth-chattering one. "Everyone gather 'round and watch what happens to Longbottom's toad. If he has managed to produce a Shrinking Solution, it will shrink to a tadpole." Harmony's reflexive mental response to this was roughly _That's total bullshit, that's not shrinking, that's de-aging. The only reason that could work is if potions were at least partly based on intent, so putting it on inanimate objects shrinks their psionic presence. Then again that would explain how Neville manages to fuck up so epically all the time, he's so concerned about failing that his psionic waveform induces the potion to undergo reactions that make it take on properties that cause it to fail. He's lucky he's a rich brat, otherwise he'd be broke reimbursing people for cauldrons and his caregivers would probably have been more concerned about drilling more sense into him. His grandmother must be one hell of a bitch to have failed this badly in raising her grandson._

She observed the reasonable reactions of both the Gryffindors and the Slytherins. The Gryffindors looked fearful for their friend's pet, the Slytherins looked to be a range between indifference and excitement. Personally, she was excited to see if he'd managed to overcome his weak will for the moment. She would also be excited if the damned toad was poisoned, for one main reason: Neville might actually be more motivated to tidy himself up and stop being a public safety hazard in the potions lab.

In the meantime, Snape talked on "If, as I don't doubt presuming he was in his present state during the making of the potion," Snape frowned at Neville's trembling lip disdainfully "he has done it wrong, his toad is likely to be poisoned." He picked up Trevor in his left hand and fed it a few drops of the potion with a small spoon. After he gulped, there was a small pop of displaced air. Harmony had her eyes shut because she was focusing on the psychic signature of the event… _Hmm, a phase-out and quick construction of… a psionic image in its place? What… WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? IT'S LIKE POLYJUICE!_ She opened her eyes and saw Trevor the tadpole wriggling in Snape's palm, probably suffocating from the lack of water for his gills. The Gryffindors, save herself, began applauding as Snape, with his eyebrows raised, pulled a small bottle from his pocket and poured a few drops on top of Trevor, dispelling the psychic illusion and causing the location-synched true form to phase back in where the illusion had been with a small pop.

Snape nodded as he passed Trevor back to a trembling Neville "Surprisingly well done, Longbottom, however, I hope the next time you will not require assistance to manage it. One point from Gryffindor for requiring assistance, I would have taken five if it had been done for you by, say, Miss Granger, but Miss Shepard seems to have found a better way to motivate you into not costing Hogwarts many valuable potions ingredients. Class dismissed."

As soon as they got out of the class, Harmony dragged Hermione to the bathroom they'd checked in at before class. Making sure it was abandoned and thereby making sure your future self had a good LZ was now their standard doctrine when they used their time-turners as history and existing time loops dictated. However, this time they were a bit late in rushing over to where they were supposed to be, the result was them hearing Ron and Harry talking at the top of the Great Hall steps.

Ron had just sighed and said "A point because the potion went right… he really should have given Neville a point or two if he wanted to make sure no more accidents happened in his lab on a daily basis. Hermione, what do you think?" There was a pause "Hermione?" Another pause "They were right behind us…" Well, technically right now she was both in their time-travelling bathroom and thundering up the stairs two flights down with her twin at her side dragging her to be faster, but that wasn't the point.

"There they are." Harry said as the two girls rushed into view of the boys.

"What happened?" Ron asked.

"What?" Hermione questioned.

"A few minutes ago you were right behind us, but you were still at the bottom of the stairs just now, and we didn't exactly hurry."

"What?" Harmony wanted to facepalm at her twin's utterly confused expression "Oh… I had to go back for something. Oh no…" Her book bag popped open along a seam and Harmony rolled her eyes before taking out a military-issue duffel bag like her own and packing the books into it instead.

"Why are you carrying all these around with you?" Ron asked her as he helped shove several large tomes into the bag. "'Sides, that was more than the time needed to run back and get something, unless you were distracted… I wouldn't be too surprised if you were."

"You know how many subjects I'm taking, couldn't hold these for me, could you?" She shoved some at him to hold while she organized the others.

"But… You haven't got any of these subjects today. It's only Defence Against the Dark Arts this afternoon."

"Oh yes, I hope there's something good for lunch, I'm starving." She said absently as she stalked off. Harmony followed mutely, deciding that any attempt at damage control short of applying blunt trauma to make the boys forget would probably do more damage than was worthwhile. Even that blunt trauma option was likely to damage Ron more than was worthwhile. Harry on the other hand… it might knock some sense into him.

"D'you get the feeling Hermione's not telling us something?"Ron said to Harry behind the twins. Harmony grimaced out of the two boys' line of sight. Yes, indeed…

* * *

Professor Lupin took a few minutes after they'd arrived to show up at their first DADA class of the year. Harmony had been moving around the classroom in no set pattern as if patrolling or something, rolling her rolled-up sleeves down to conceal her hands as she watched the entrances of the room warily, expecting some sort of surprise test to motivate them all. If it wasn't for Lupin's casual entry she might actually have thrown the desk she'd abruptly grabbed hold of at him. He looked healthier than on the train, like he'd gotten some good food into him. "Good afternoon. Would you please put all your books back in your bags. Today's will be a practical lesson. You will need only your wands. I also would like to assure you that no desks need to be hurled unless the door is blown open or kicked open by someone… though I advise the rest of you to not try anything like kicking it in the future for the sake of your health." Apparently he was an ex-Auror or maybe ex-prankster if he'd noticed something like that.

The class put away their books, save Harmony who'd never taken them out in the first place upon seeing the room devoid of the Professor—not that Professors made classrooms any safer given they could be Polyjuiced enemies in disguise. After they were done, Lupin said "Right then… If you'd follow me…"

They observed Lupin ramming a piece of gum up Peeves' nose en route to the staff room, which induced a general increase in respect from the class. Snape turned out to be in the staff room when they arrived, and he made to leave as they entered, saying "Leave it open, Lupin. I'd rather not witness this" when Lupin made to shut the door. He turned when he reached the doorway "Possibly no one's warned you, Lupin, but this class contains Neville Longbottom. I would advise you against giving him difficult tasks, unless Miss Shepard managed to encourage him. If she does so then proceed with slight caution. If not, well, I'm saying this to make sure I still have at least one surviving chair to lounge in later…"

Neville's face had turned pink, though he looked vaguely surprised Snape had made allowances in his statements. Harry was glaring at Snape as if he saw the mess in black and white. Lupin raised his eyebrows "I was hoping that Neville would assist me with the first stage of the operation, and I am sure he will perform it admirably."

Snape's smirk was seen as mocking by most of the class, and his incline of the head was interpreted as derisive, but Harmony and Lupin saw it for what it was, an acknowledgement of Lupin's methodology. There was no thanks for the bad cop in a play of good cop and bad cop, after all…

"Now then…" He beckoned the class toward the end of the room, where an old wardrobe the teachers kept their spare robes in sat. As he stood next to it, it gave a sudden wobble, banging off the wall. The next notable sound in the room was a loud "oof" from Dean tripping backward into Ron over where Harmony was on her knees sheltering Hermione—who she'd tackled down—from any potential explosion. She realized there was nothing immediately wrong and shot up, relocating herself and her sister to the center of the crowd. An explosive charge powerful enough to cut through shrapnel-wise to the middle of the crowd was likely to just blast straight through it and could have been triggered while they were all on the other side of the room. Still, paranoia usually didn't hurt much. "Nothing to worry about. There's a Boggart in there." Most of the class seemed to think this was something worth worrying about, and Harmony (who, like Hermione, had read all her textbooks thoroughly and gotten through with an overview of next year's stuff) wondered what form it would take against her. What was her greatest fear? A thought of Hermione bullet-ridden and dead crossed her mind, a mop of black hair face-down on the ground in a puddle of blood occupying a corner of that thought for a moment before it disappeared. The thought of her twin dead disappeared too as it was replaced by a thought of something even more horrible.

Said "something even more horrible" almost made her want to laugh. _I bet no one else will find it horrifying, if they even understand it._ Lupin continued with "Boggarts like dark, enclosed spaces, wardrobes, the gap beneath beds," Harmony's mind shouted _Aha, so the stories of monsters under the bed are real!_ "the cupboards under sinks—I've even met one that had lodged itself in a grandfather clock. _This_ one moved in yesterday afternoon, and I asked the headmaster if the staff would leave it to give my third years some practice. So, the first question we must ask ourselves is, what _is _a boggart?"

Hermione volunteered her answer, putting up her hand and receiving a gesture from Professor Lupin "It's a shape-shifter. It can take the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us most."

"Couldn't have put it better myself." Harmony rolled her eyes mentally at her sister's beaming. "So the Boggart sitting in the darkness within has not yet assumed a form. He does not yet know what will frighten the person on the other side of the door. Nobody knows what a Boggart looks like when he is alone, but when I let him out, he will immediately become whatever each of us most fears. This means," Neville's audible teeth-chattering was ignored by the Professor, hopefully it would help him calm down if he wasn't the focus of attention "that we have a huge advantage over the Boggart before we begin. Have you spotted it, Harry?"

"Er… because there are so many of us, it won't know what shape it should be?" Harry tried as Harmony and Hermione eyed him rather closely.

"Precisely. It's always best to have company when you're dealing with a Boggart. He becomes confused. Which should he become, a headless corpse or a flesh-eating slug? I once saw a Boggart make that very mistake—tried to frighten two people at once and turned himself into half a slug. Not remotely frightening." _Well, maybe a bit disturbing, but… well…_ "The charm that repels a Boggart is simple, yet it requires force of mind. You see, the thing that really finishes a Boggart is _laughter._ What you need to do is force it to assume a shape that you find amusing. We will practice the charm without wands first. After me, please… _riddikulus_!"

Harmony said it the proper way and not the wizarding bullshit variant "Ridiculous!" She was also scoffing at the idea of finishing it with laughter—the mental image of playing canned laughter at a Boggart was too amusing to ignore and warranted testing, just for kicks—since she was pretty sure that as a psionic-based entity it was more the psychic emanations from the target that would damage it in a face-to-face confrontation.

"Good, very good. But that was the easy part, I'm afraid. You see, the word alone is not enough. And this is where you come in, Neville." Neville looked completely terrified before Harmony smacked him in the back of the head, causing him to look over at her as she clasped his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. He swallowed and stood vaguely straighter.

"Right, Neville, first things first: what would you say is the thing that frightens you most in the world?" Neville mouthed something, with no sound effects emanating from his throat "Didn't catch that, Neville, sorry." Lupin said cheerfully.

"Professor Snape." The boy whispered. Most of the class laughed until Harmony glared at them, even Neville grinned slightly, though she didn't turn her glare on him.

"Professor Snape… hmmm… Neville, I believe you live with your grandmother?" Lupin asked. Harmony stiffened _I do not want to see even an effigy of that uptight old-fashioned pureblood bitch who almost ruined her grandson just because of her obsession with her son._

"Er… yes, but… I don't want the Boggart to turn into her either."

"No, no, you misunderstand me, I wonder, could you tell us what sort of clothes your grandmother usually wears?"

_I have a bad feeling about this…_ Harmony's mind sing-songed before going back to its usual vitriol. _If you do what I think he's going to have you do, Neville, Snape would have good reason to hate you for a very long time. Hell, I would probably hate you for life if you dressed even an effigy of me in that old crone's clothes._

"Well… always the same hat. A tall one with a stuffed vulture on top. And a long dress… green, normally… and sometimes a fox-fur scarf." The boy looked bewildered as to what the hell Lupin was asking this for.

"And a handbag?" Lupin prodded. Harmony was suddenly certain where this was going. _Damn it, Lupin, Snape already dislikes Neville for being a hopeless case of lack of coordination, are you trying to turn that into actual hate? Or are you trying to give Neville something to lean on so that the next time he sees Snape his first reaction will not be utter terror? Hmm… the truth appears to be a three-edged sword here… and no, that's not code for "mind-numbingly impractical" like that phrase usually signifies._

"A big red one."

Lupin nodded slightly "Right then, can you picture those clothes very clearly, Neville? Can you see them in your mind's eye?"

"Yes…?" Neville said questioningly.

"When the Boggart bursts out of this wardrobe, Neville, and sees you, it will assume the form of Professor Snape. And you will raise your wand… thus" Lupin demonstrated again "and cry '_Riddikulus_' while concentrating hard on your grandmother's clothes. If all goes well, Professor Boggart Snape will be forced into that vulture-topped hat, and that green dress, with that big red handbag." There was a dull roar of laughter from the class, the wardrobe wobbled somewhat more violently, and Harmony grimaced at the consequences this may well hold for Neville and Lupin. "If Neville is successful, the Boggart is likely to shift his attention to each of us in turn, I would like all of you to take a moment now to think of the thing that scares you most, and imagine how you might force it to look comical"

Harmony tried to think, but she failed to think of something she was completely terrified of, since all the things she was genuinely afraid of were effectively impossible so long as her family line continued to exist and Ancestor Kane kept watch over mankind. There was no need to truly fear the impossible, so… that would be a tough question to answer. Harmony skimmed some surface thoughts from Harry to pass the time the others were using thinking while Ron was muttering something about taking the legs off—he probably was considering spiders which made perfect sense. On the other hand, while some may call Harry's second thought of Dementors being his worst fear wise, for he feared fear the most, Harmony thought his first thought of Voldemort much more practical. Though he shouldn't fear Voldemort himself, he should fear the consequences someone like Voldemort brings to society. Then again to allow someone like Voldemort to rise required the whole British Wizarding World effectively be accomplices by their culture of hatred and therefore need punishing for their heinous crimes against sentience.

Back on the topic of fearing Dementors. Being terrified of something that cannot tangibly hurt you—though it led up to the Dementor's Kiss which could—was meaningless and only cripple oneself. If it can't hurt you directly in the imminent future, then there was no need to fear it, instead, one should focus on killing it. For example, this could be done using raw physics i.e. smashing the Dementor until it was no longer intact, burning it (every physical entity had a temperature tolerance max), or other means such as excess physical trauma i.e. tearing it apart with a 20mm rotary gun.

"Everyone ready?" Lupin asked. Harmony noticed Harry gulp nervously yet remain too cowardly to ask for more time as everyone else nodded and rolled up their sleeves. Harmony had stitched her robes to be more practical from day one, so that wasn't an issue. Loading her grenade launcher with an incendiary round just in case was, however, an issue she'd forgotten until just now. High Explosive was a no-no in the classroom for obvious reasons, but incendiary was okay. No one here except Hermione had any idea what she was fiddling with anyways, and besides, nobility in the wizarding world had the right to bear arms, and since Dumbledore was more up to date with Muggle events than most wizards, he acknowledged her and Hermione as such.

"Neville, we're going to back away, let you have a clear field, all right? I'll call the next person forward… Everyone back, now, so Neville can get a clear shot." Harmony had a sudden thought of Lupin being a psychiatrist with bipolar patients instead of a teacher given that soothing manner of speech… granted, kids could be pretty bipolar, but that wasn't the point. They all backed up against the walls, and Neville was left standing alone beside the wardrobe looking pale and scared, though he had his sleeves rolled up and held his wand ready. That was real courage, not the raw stupidity Harry so often exemplified. "On the count of three, Neville…" Lupin pointed his own wand at the wardrobe handle "One… two… three… _now_!" A couple sparks flew from the wand and hit the doorknob. Harmony registered the psychic energy discharge and frowned at the waste of energy by creating those sparks to indicate the force field was working.

The wardrobe opened, and Professor Snape stepped out, glaring at Neville as usual. Neville backed away in terror, wand up and mouthing wordlessly. Snape was reaching inside his robes now—Harmony had a sudden mental image of Snape presenting Neville with a notice banning him from his potions classroom until his chronic lack of coordination (_hmm, is it schizophrenic maybe?_) could be cured—when Neville squeaked "_R _— _r _— _riddikulus_!"

There was a sudden crack and Snape stumbled, suddenly donned in clothes even more disturbing than Trelawney's. The class bellowed in laughter and the Boggart cringed at the psionic feedback it was experiencing. "Parvati! Forward!"

Snape vanished with a crack of displaced air as the psionic hologram was vanished and reinstated in a new form. Where he had been was a blood-stained, bandaged mummy, its covered face turned toward Parvati and it began trudging toward her, its arms rising to try to grab at her. She cried the incantation and forced the adjustment to the hologram that resulted in the bandage unwrapping and the mummy tripping, falling down, and its head rolling off. Harmony felt a sudden irrational impulse to try punting the head out the window to see what would happen to the Boggart , but then dismissed the vaguely amusing thought.

"Seamus!" Lupin shouted. The Irish boy charged past Parvati and the Psi-hologram shifted as the Boggart registered a new, more pressing potential threat. It shifted to a banshee's form and began screeching before Seamus silenced it (literally) with the thoroughly ridiculous (also literally) spell they'd just been taught. The next few fears from students were somewhat absurd, until the Acromantula Ron summoned forth with a bit of blood-matted curly brown hair sticking out between its mandibles. Harmony narrowed her eyes, though Hermione didn't seem to notice the hair that matched their own. The boy was getting a bit too close for comfort, better to keep him at a reasonable distance until he hit twenty, since she had no intention of becoming an aunt (genetically speaking, an equivalent mother, but that wasn't the point) before age twenty-five.

Ron's means of making it more amusing involved removing its legs and replacing the hair with a large bar of soap, although he still jumped back when the big, rotund body rolled over to where he was. Harry was the next closest target, just ahead of Harmony, but Lupin darted forward, probably concerned about a potential Dark Wanker showing up, and caught its attention. It turned into a pale orb, and Harmony took an embarrassingly long moment to realize it showed the near side of the Moon. _He fears the moon… it must harm or pain him somehow, but what sort of person would be harmed by the moon?_

"Forward, Neville, and finish him off!" Lupin cried as the Boggart landed on the ground as a cockroach.

Harmony frowned at the incomprehensible lack of participation for her and Hermione but for the low remaining apparent HP of the Boggart. _But it should still be enough to withstand the psionic feedback of another wave of mirth unless critical hits actually exist in real life, at least in Psionics…_

"HA!" Neville shouted in laughter, doubling over, and the Boggart's Psi-hologram collapsed as the psychic entity ruptured into the Psi-background of the universe.

…_Well I suppose critical hits really do exist. Note to self: figure out how to pull such strikes off._

"Excellent work, Neville! Well done, everyone… let me see, five points to Gryffindor for every person to tackle the Boggart, ten for Neville because he did it twice… and five each to Harry and Hermione."

"But I didn't do anything…" Harry said. Harmony wanted to smack him over the head for forgetting his question-answering.

"You and Hermione answered my questions correctly at the start of the class, Harry. Very well, everyone, an excellent lesson. Homework, kindly read the chapter on Boggarts and summarize it for me… to be handed in on Monday. That will be all."

Harry was feeling rather glum as they left the staffroom, Harmony observed. Ron and Hermione seemed to have noticed too, but took a hands-off approach. Harmony couldn't fault them, since bringing Harry's head around far enough to see sense would probably break his neck. However, something compelled her to at least try to salvage him, if for nothing else than the fact that he was iconic enough that he could be used to direct the mindless masses of the Wizarding World. A small voice that she didn't even notice said in the back of her head _Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that, girlie._ "Harry, it has nothing to do with him seeing you collapse on the train, he probably expected your worst fear to be Lord Mouldy-shorts, do you really expect the appearance of THAT in a classroom won't start a mass panic?"

"I did think of him… I suppose the class would have panicked over it… but then I thought of those Dementors…"

"You fear your memories. Some would no doubt tell you that it is wise to be terrified of fear above all else, but since Dementors cannot harm you directly unless you succumb to that fear, it is meaningless to fear them." Harmony tried to drill her ideology into his thick skull.

Unfortunately the immense density of said skull was shattering her drill bit. "Harmony, I think being so terrified you can't do anything is a more vulnerable state than facing Lord Voldemort one-on-one without a wand, personal experience." She gave up and nodded submissively, although said anecdotal evidence was technically true and supported his hypothesis, the samples size was too small, and trying to teach him statistics would be about as successful as teaching wizards anything more quantitative than Arithmancy, which was laughably easy math by Harmoyn's opinion.

Ron in the meantime was talking to Hermione "That was the most useful DADA lesson we've ever had, wasn't it?"

"He seems like a very good teacher, but I wish I could have had a turn with the Boggart…"

Ron snorted "What would it have been for you? A piece of homework that only got nine out of ten?" Hermione glared at him for a moment before smiling a bit, indulging his opnion for now.

* * *

A/N: Yes, Harmony is a lunatic. However, she isn't much of a sadist to non-deserving folk. This chapter give Neville some time in the spotlight.

**No reviews last chapter so no questions to answer here.**

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